At The Table with The Dice Tower - Re-Role

0:00At the Table with the Dice Tower. Episode 60. Reroll.

0:23Welcome to At the Table with the Dice Tower, a podcast about games and the people who play them. Last time, we found board games that would appeal to fans of role-playing games. This time around, we head the other direction, discussing role-playing games that embrace popular board game mechanisms. Plus, we present a new tale of board gaming horror and bring home a bouquet of roses, thorns, and hula hoops. I'm Eric Sommerer. I'm Julie Ahern. And I'm Tom Vassell. And I wanted to tell you guys an amusing story that happened to me. Okay. Well, it's very, I guess it's minor, but... It better be amusing.

1:01I got a call from FedEx and the FedEx guy was like, hey, I'm here with customs and we need you to verify organic material and send it in this form for this package you're getting. And I was like, what are we talking about? Oh, no. Whoa. So they told me the package and it was coming from Korean board games. So I went and looked at the invoice and Korean board games sent me six items. They valued them all at$1. OK. The first item was tomatoes. The second item was Coffee Rush Grab and Go. And then there was Blooming Sea. And the last item was Grandma's Recipe. So I then had to explain to the guy that these were board games.

1:43He's like, it says tomato. Titles, sir. They are titles. It just says tomatoes. I'm like, look at the name of the company who said it. Korea Board Games. He's like, well, what's in these things? I was like, mostly cardboard and paper. so I was just amused by that did they finally believe you? he said oh that makes sense or something to that effect and we'll get back to you if this doesn't work and I haven't heard from them since but I just was amused because when I looked at the list I was like yes I would have also thought what are these that being the case I hope tomatoes is a good game but we'll find out it better be after all this okay well you know we have a snow day here in Connecticut it uh it's our first of the year even though there's no snow on the ground yet but it's one of those like they're anticipating it's going to get bad and i went swimming last night that's nice but anyhow eric you just got back from a crowded crowded event packs unplugged which i haven't seen them release their numbers yet but people are talking that not only is packs unplugged like significantly bigger than origins that it's starting to edge towards gen con it is i i was Trying to figure out, like, how many Pax Unplugged would make a Gen Con.

2:59I want to say it's, I don't think we've crossed the halfway mark yet, but it was a lot of people. It felt bigger. We have not completely absorbed the entire convention center yet. There is still room to grow in that building. This particular year, we were sharing the space with the Marathon. The Philadelphia Marathon was doing its registration in the lower level of the convention center, which made for some real fun times when you're trying to enter and exit the building, depending on what you're there for. Oh, no. All of these, you know, athletes are all lined up in one space and we're trying to cross the street.

3:36And that was before the marathon even began. Once it started, there was both a half marathon and a full marathon, which blocked off chunks of the city. and my hotel was on the opposite side of the half marathon from the convention. So at one point I had to dash across the street and join the marathon for a little while, go with the flow for about half a block in order to cross the street. Yeah, that was fun. But then on the full marathon, the route just went straight from my hotel to the convention center, so it felt like I was getting cheered on as I walked. So that was an adventure. It was sort of a weird schedule this year because PAX was earlier in the year.

4:19Usually it comes after Thanksgiving and sort of kicks off the holiday shopping season and the Christmas market. The Christmas market was open in Philly, but only for like the last couple of days. It had just opened. They were still working out the kinks. But that was fun. I got to visit very briefly the holiday market. And I ran my event running Hot Streak dressed as a banana and ran, I believe it was 14 tables of Hot Streak simultaneously. The screaming was intense. The only issue we ran into is that some groups moved a lot faster. We tried to run all the races together so that all the screaming would happen at once.

4:58And some folks were like, no, we're ready to move on. And other groups were still, you know, racing. And so I had to be like, no, no, hold on. Wait, everybody just. Wait, I'm confused. You didn't just win one big race for everybody? No, everybody had their own deck, and they were making their own choices. Chaos. Chaos. I won variety. You could have just drawn one deck and said the fish is forward for you. Well, yeah, but then how do they influence the deck? That's half the fun is I'm going to put this secret information in the deck. Oh, yeah, you're right. I forgot about the influencing of the deck.

5:31Then you had each table decide as a group. I don't know. Yeah, each they all did their thing. And yeah, I didn't want to add a bunch of extra rules. We just played the game. Yeah, you're right. I'm trying to think. I'm going to think this through. Okay. I'm going to figure it out. You get right on that. I had a great time and people really, really enjoyed it. So it was a successful PAX. It was a tiring PAX. I ran in a marathon at PAX. Good times. I also played Hot Streak over the Thanksgiving break. I think on Thanksgiving, actually, introduced it to some new people who had not played it before.

6:02Nice. That's going to hit the table for Family Game Day for sure. I was about – I was expecting to hear I also ran in a marathon. No. I am also – I am walking consistently. I've hit 22 days in a row here. But the running part is not ever going to happen, I think. Legit. My knees will allow that. Don't email me folks with ways to do it. I don't want to run. I have a pool and the doctor was like, no contact. Movement is awesome. I was like, thank you. Did you get one of those weight things that are like the inflatable floaty weights that you can use in the pool? No. Eric, I just want to swim. Stop trying to ruin everything.

6:41Get some cool floaty weights. You ruined a convention with a marathon? Trying to ruin my swimming with weights? What's wrong with you?

6:50Yes. Oh, but we are close to the end of the year. Christmas is coming. Eric made some weird reference as to the shopping season starts now. You should have already been buying presents, folks. Don't wait until now. If you do, though, we posted some Christmas shopping lists on the Dice Tower YouTube channel, so you can check those out. They are so good. Well, thank you. We tried to do a diverse selection of games, so check those out. And you can get tickets for both Dice Tower West, which is in March, and Dice Tower in Las Vegas, and Dice Tower East, which is in Orlando in July. Both of those are selling now and this is a good time to buy them.

7:31Buy presents for people or buy them for yourself as you make the schedule for this coming year. Come on out. It's going to be fantastic. Give the gift of an experience. Yes. I like it. I know people who've done that, but usually it's like a couple. Like I bought this for my husband or my wife or my boyfriend or girlfriend. And I'm bringing them because if you just buy a ticket for someone, they're like, thanks. Did you get me a hotel too? I go, wow. No, that's on you. But I got you the ticket. Fair enough. A group out of me. All right. I think it's time to head to our topic. We, as I said in the intro, talked about role-playing games last time, talking about board games that would appeal to role-players.

8:12And Julie was practically bouncing out of her seat because she had preparation for games that go the other way, a collection of role-playing games that have board game-style mechanisms in them. And we're like, are there really that many of those? And Julie's like, yes, there are many of those. Let's talk about them. We said, let's hang on. Let's put a pin in that and talk about it next time. So, Julie, I think you get to lead this journey. Where are we headed?

8:41All the way through. Okay, time's up. And out the other side. So, Tom is not as enthusiastic about this, but that's okay. Maybe I'll persuade him. No, no, no, no, no. I'm not non-enthusiastic about it. I'm interested in the subject. I'm just going to ask a lot of clarifying questions. I play an RPG in my group here. Absolutely. But let me tell you this, Julie, to get us started. I know that I played RPGs back in the day where I just bought basically lots of books and read them and then eventually played with people. And I was attracted to board games because board games gave me a very strong set of rules.

9:20And I didn't have people complaining or slaying the king of the dwarves when I that literally is impossible. But they found some weird loophole. Correct. And that is where a lot of board gamers find the disconnect with role playing game. And I'm not going to say, okay, so there are many, many, many, just like board games, there are plenty of tabletop role-playing games out there, thousands. So will you be able to find one that might satisfy that level of structure? Probably. Have I read through every single one of them? Absolutely not. So this is, you know, these are the games that I've had some level of experience with, whether it's just reading the book, whether it's I've played some of it, I've at least done a demo of it.

10:10So we're going to talk about the ones that are in my purview of a certain level, knowing that there's more out there. And yes, knowing that some people, yes, it just might be board games for them. No thank you on the RPG. But if you were in a situation where you wanted to try one, at least you know what type might be better for you to try and play. So you listed some low-hanging fruit. The easy answers. If you like rolling dice, if you like co-op games. Obviously, you can easily transition with having those kinds of mechanics or mechanisms in your game, for sure. I wanted to talk, I'm not super briefly about that, that, I mean, it's kind of silly, but Cooperative game is most RPGs.

11:03But if you really like the co-op experience, I was going to say, and more leaning towards the cozy of the co-op part, I'd recommend Heckin' Good Doggos or Tea Time Adventures, which are two different short. You only play in one session. So they have a bunch of different types of sessions, but you don't have to make it an ongoing comeback every time thing where you sit down, you play and you have a cozy cooperative adventure. A hecking good doggos. You're playing a dog and you're going out, having adventures as a dog, which is I've talked about on this show before. It's as an adult is actually kind of a release because you don't have any responsibilities.

11:46Somebody is supposed to be feeding you and taking care of you. And that level of fantasy was kind of fun. Well, let me ask about that. the dog one yes i'm also it's nice to have no responsibilities but then what is the what is the challenge what is the goal of that game uh the goal so you're still going to be sent on a uh quest of sorts uh when i played the adventure was there was a dog racing track and we were going to free all the dogs. So they didn't have to work. All right. So you're still given a quest, like any kind of role-playing game, but the quests are dog-centered. So it's not high risk.

12:35It's pretty... So it's more about the feel-goods and the working together because also your dog's in a human's world. So how do you work together to get a thing done? So Team of Time Adventures is, what do I want to say, personified animals. So, you know, little animals with suits on and things like that. And each episode comes also with a recipe to make a kind of like a cake or something, something that will go with tea. So a snack and tea. And you have, again, think a wind in the willows kind of like adventures. Okay. Okay. Anthropomorphic animals. Yep. So those, if you like cooperative, like extra cooperative, but also in a play at once, you don't have to play ongoing sessions.

13:23Those are the two that I recommend. Dice rolling. I mean, come on. If you know anything about RPGs, you know you're going to be rolling dice for most of them. Not all, but most of them. And obviously you have like D20s or D &D and Pathfinder mostly. if you want percentile which is a d100 or a 10 and ones two dice uh base 10 dice you've got your call of cthulhu's um you have symbol based dice games like uh fantasy flight games star wars or fate core and then you have things like fudge dice which are have three faces a plus a minus or a blank and it's so you're doing a success, partial success or fail for a lot of those games.

14:09So dice rolling. Pick your poison. So those are, yes, those are my low hanging fruit ones. So let's say I'm a fan of El Grande and I really like area control. What's wrong with you? Okay. No. Then enjoy El Grande. Yes. You're not making the jump, Eric, if you're a fan of El Grande, okay? Come on now. That's not it. What if I like to eat pies. You wrote down area control on here. I was going to say, oh, area control. Fair enough. All right. But pies, I'm going to go back to Tea Time Adventures. Okay. So, yes. Okay. Area control is actually a lot of role-playing games, because you think about like Warhammer, which is kind of the bridge.

14:55A lot of role-playing games have stuff about area control in them, or are about maintaining a kingdom or so you actually have a fair amount of area control in a lot of or uh dungeon crawls where you're taking over the dungeon so you that one actually it's not a perfect compared one-off but there is quite a bit of it uh i don't know if necessarily el grande was where i was going to go with that but um let's see you have specifically if you're just into the map aspect of all you have Beak, Feather, and Bone, which is world building, a world building, can be a world building tool just to build a map, but you can also make it a map, like a map labeling RPG where you are taking over a map.

15:42And that one actually, the basic rule is you don't need a lot of, actually you need a map and a regular deck of cards, 52 deck of cards. But if you're going to play it, they have specific ones where you're building either buildings or areas and describing them. The beak is the reputation, feather is appearance, bone is the interior. And so you're using those to talk about their attributes and qualifying them to see what they have so that when that will play into the keeping them, maintaining them, defending them type of thing against other players. so you have something that is the closest that i could think of uh but you also have lots of lots of rpgs that are just about factions that are a war with each other um like the song of ice and fire role-playing game um the numenaria system from monty cook has a lot of that in it and uh one other that i thought was kind of unique is coyote and crow which is about the different Native American nations and they have in an alternate reality where there was no Europeans so they major nations have taken over different factions of North America and whether they're maintaining a balance or at war with each other is part of the game you said you were going to ask a lot of questions okay well here's the biggest problem I have I want to play role playing games and I'm sitting here if I want to play a board game I just order the board game and play it If I want to play a role-playing game, I'm much more intimidated because it comes and I'm like, well, who's running it?

17:25What are your recommendations in that regard? Yeah, that is going to be the barrier to entry for most role-playing games. There are books out there that have it where you can solo-fy your game. But again, that's a lot of work for you or the one that's doing it. and also playing. So you can, but that's not what you're asking. You're going to have to bite the bullet for most games and have somebody being running it. Of the listing that I just gave you, it's what are the, there's plenty of places that will tell you, like if you're saying what's the easiest to read, what's the easiest to get into NGM.

18:13um well so bgg has a role-playing game separate from the bgg page but it's also run the same way that will will rate things like that um and tell you how easy it is for somebody to run or how difficult the core book is to get into something like coyote and crow one of the things i really liked about it was they made the font ginormous so reading the book is super easy because frankly that is a factor. There are some core books that look so cool and the art is so cool, but they do these stylized fonts. And I'm like, I'm reading lots and lots of pages to get into this. That is a barrier for me personally, when I'm looking at the pretty art, but I can't read the words.

19:01It reads as an art book, but not as a rules document. Correct. So no, you're still going to have to do that and yes if that's a barrier then yeah you're there's there's very few there are there are and i will say i have some solo rpg one shots below and different examples that i can give you for a solo game but not necessarily a self-run i haven't done any personally i know they exist i haven't had any experience with them i want to run the game i'm gonna i'm gonna do it i'm gonna i'm gonna teach everybody yeah what what should i be getting besides the game itself. Do I need to buy lots of dice, a screen?

19:42I'm confused and afraid. Oh, no. All right. Well, you need the core book. You need the core book of any game as the game master, GM. You should have dice, but if you have a computer, there are plenty of random number generators on the internet you don't actually need dice it's just really satisfying to roll dice so you know the game will tell you what you need and and you can decide and make that financial decision for yourself uh other than that it depends on the game And so we play online. So the RGM doesn't need a screen. They use online dice. They need the book and the internet. There's very little else that we actually need.

20:43We like having all the accessories because we're all little dice goblins in our group. But it's genuinely financially not necessary for us to have any of the other things. The players don't need the book because you don't want to be reading ahead in the campaign or the experience. If you're following a set campaign, that ruins it for everybody. If you already know the story and read ahead when you're playing, you're supposed to be doing that yourself. So it can be very, very basic or it can be super elaborate. I've played a dungeon crawl where they built the entire five-story dungeon from, again, I always forget their name, the company that builds.

21:34They're based out of Brooklyn, and they're at Gen Con every year. They build the dungeon pieces. Is it Dwarven Forge? Dwarven Forge. A five-story dungeon with boards in between each one that separated. So like fog of war, you could only see what they had uncovered. And we went and every time we finished one, we would lift up the next, like there was a big board in between each one and move that dungeon off to the side and go down one level to the next dungeon. That was super cool and incredibly expensive. and a once in a lifetime experience. I don't know many people who could have that. It was great.

22:14It's completely unnecessary. Super fun, but very unnecessary. You can play with a core book and the internet if that's for most games. And for a lot of these games, that's all that there is. There's the smaller press games. There's just a core rule book. It's not like there's a monster manual and a spellkeeper's guide and all. Right. You want to go to like drive through RPG and you can get the downloaded PDF, which is less expensive typically than a physical copy of the book. So even at that, if you want to be even more cost effective, you can go. And usually most of the time on anything like any of this, I drive through RPG is kind of my go to.

22:54But there's a bunch of them and most of them will give you a sample so you can take a look and read through it first before you decide before you purchase it. um once you have it it's a pdf for your you know that you can print out if you need to or just have it on your computer so you can do rpg cost effectively most people you know get into the like the dice i have and like everything um too many and i enjoy that but i like the tactile experience of rolling dice. It's for me. And, you know, I have fidget spinners at home when I'm working and things. I need the tactile experience. That's me. So having the dice, at least some dice is a requirement.

23:42But there are people in my group that literally just use the computer dice rolls. Just press a button. I will say that from my experience, I'm someone who I'm like, ooh, that base book, look, I'm going to build a whole world and everything. And then you start doing it. You find that it's a tremendous amount of work, that these prepackaged adventures that companies make are not a bad thing. No. They're really, really handy, and they give you, even if you can obviously deviate from the script all you want, but they give you a really strong framework. And if someone says, oh, there's an inn. What's the innkeeper's name?

24:17You're not having to go, uh, Shamaka Baka. You know, you can, you know, that stuff is there, and they'll give you a backstory. and I found that totally stealing shmaka baka there's a lot of cool resources out there that are system agnostic that like I bought one at Gen Con that just gives a bunch of locations I had one for dungeons and one for inns yeah and then you can just stick these in any campaign you want I have a book called Masks which is every page is a character so if you want a character you can just like flip open and be like all right and you have a fully fleshed out character and again you can modify this stuff all you want absolutely but sometimes i need a bit of a guide absolutely that is yep and they again if you're new and everybody's new then the gm is new if the gm is more experienced a GM can also very easily be like here's a character here's a baseline and give you something pretty quickly as well what is your opinion of the big ones so we have D &D as the biggest role playing game of all time and probably followed up by Pathfinder or we got Star Wars as a big one what's the madness one Call of Cthulhu call of cthulhu not call well there's call of cthulhu but what's the one where everyone uh your your goal is to die what is it not die too close i forget but there's a lot of these you know those horror ones oh you mentioned a lot of indie ones are the big ones okay yeah uh well i mean not entirely i did mention uh star wars briefly i've played and now you say that, I've played everything you just listed.

26:11I've played a campaign of all of them. And I've enjoyed all of those campaigns immensely. And for kind of the reason you already said, they have set scenarios and campaigns that make it super easy for people to get into and can do as much handholding or as little handholding as you want to get something set up. so you can get into a storyline with a lot of extra support um that you don't have to generate all the ideas or the world building star wars man you don't you absolutely don't need to get do any world building it's it's it's been the world's done been built um so for things like that it kind of makes and specifically star wars thinking about it i i've been playing dnd i have um i thought it was i have the second printing or the second print through of the first edition dnd was my what i was playing on when i was in the fourth grade so i've been playing dnd for off and on for my whole life and we're on fifth edition now in the campaign that i play And I love that, but that doesn't necessarily mean that...

27:27I say this, but most people love dragons, but it's not for everybody. So Star Wars is a great alternative type of thing where there's still a full system and world that is easily accessible for most people. So I think those are great. And that's part of how you can find more people to play those who have experience. you can usually find stuff at game stores happening so for accessibility absolutely I would recommend that is a good starting point to just learn a game I'm getting more niche for mechanics purposes the because if and if you don't know let's say you've you're you play board games, but zero exposure to any kind of role playing game.

28:16D &D, you're mostly using a d20 to roll. And so from one to 20 is your likelihood of what order you're going to do combat in, whether or not you've successfully hit, if you've, if you're attacking somebody, whether you've hit them or not, whether somebody hits you, whether you've defended, if you're trying to do some sort of action, whether it's, and that's all up to the GM, it could be as simple as opening a door or persuading someone that these are not the droids they're looking for, that you would roll a d20. Now, I say that, but Star Wars has their own dice system. It's different. But so it's, at that point, it's just learning the dice system.

29:01D &D has simplified a lot over the years. pathfinders the same way um uh star wars has their own dice system but those scenarios that you talked about ease you into how to use them they're mostly pictures and so they're mostly pass fail or partial success for what they're doing um and they have you know the the rebel alliance symbol and the empire and they're pretty so yeah and all of that is good stuff and probably a good place to start but these are more the people who are like i've tried those and i don't like it because it doesn't have this kind of mechanism is why i'm going more niche yeah let's pick one of those like let's say i really like games that give me a whole menu of things to do and i can spend my action points to do them something that lets me do multiple things on a turn instead of just one action are there any games like that let me spend action points i like spending action points yeah well so you spend action points often to level up so dnd still is a is a if you're if it's if you're into it because you want to level up dnd is the quintessential leveling up kind of thing but if you're doing it because you like i have this i can do this many things and i can calculate that out um there's let's see feng shui which sounds all soothing it's not it's combat cozy you are you're in an action movie like uh and you are fighting so you get a pool of shots um not shots like shooting shots like a movie camera shot oh because you're in an action movie you're filming an action movie right so you have a and so different things that you can do have a shot count and then everything has a cost and so you are mapping out literally how you are fighting through a scene doing comedy through a scene whatever it is and spending your action points to do it uh so that's one where i i generally think that if you like action point action shot that action selection not action selection and action pool yeah that would be good and there are a couple others others uh what can i think of mithras gives you combat and magical actions uh cns rebirth is a classic more of a classic rpg game that uses action points to measure the character's actions per turn not nearly as specific or thematic but in that sense of like a camera shot but yes those also use action pools.

31:40All right. I'm trying to stump you now. I'm looking at one of my favorite mechanisms and that's pick up and deliver. Although we sort of joked last time that every game can be a pick up and deliver game. Yeah. They all can, but if you want something that's specific pickup delivery, so this is the ones where weirdly, I found a lot of solo journal. so if you want to just test the waters and get like a and see if you like it uh there's a game called courier it's a solo rpg a solo pickup and deliver rpg yeah okay in the post-apocalyptic world so you're getting missions delivery missions and writing about it so a delivered same thing uh if you want it more as a rpg experience and not a journaling experience which is becoming more popular, but not necessarily for a board game player.

32:37Delivery Dragons. What? Is Delivery Dragons. You are dragons and your job is to fly and deliver things. And it is a one shot. So it is played in just one session at a time. You'll have one mission and you're going to be dragons trying to work together to deliver things, magical items. So that is my, that is my, there's not a lot that I looked far and wide. And those were the best examples I could find of that. Obviously, in any, like from a D &D, your jam can give you a mission to deliver an item. And usually the item is dangerous and the person you're delivering it to is also dangerous and people are trying to steal it and it turns into a heist.