Cabin Con 2021 - Part III
Welcome back! Last you heard, we had wrapped up a game of Plague and Pestilence and I was very excited to introduce the group to that game. Here's a thing I learned long ago, courtesy of xkcd: if someone hasn't experienced something that *I* think they should, rather than mock them for it, I can share that experience with them, and that's far more satisfying.
I love this comic, but it is not mine. Full credit goes to the good folks over at xkcd.com, a brilliant webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.
So while I absolutely think anyone who enjoys games should play Plague and Pestilence, I cannot express how happy I am to be the one to introduce people to the game. Now I get to enjoy their experience with learning about it because it's a shared experience.
Anyway, all of that aside, Suf was still with us for a bit longer, so we kept our choice of game to something short and easy. So we moved onto Coup. I really enjoy Coup. For anyone who doesn't know, it's a pretty simple card game in which players collect coins in order to either Assassinate or Coup (unblockable, but more expensive) other players, thus removing one of their remaining Influence (face-down cards). Each player starts with two Influence (again: cards), and once they're lost, they cannot be regained. Once a player has lost their last Influence, they are eliminated from the game, and the winner is the last person standing. The game centers on bluffing, as certain actions (such as Assassination) can only be executed by players who have corresponding Influence in their hand (in this case, the Assassin). So I can claim that I'm paying three coins to assassinate you (thus implying I've got the Assassin in my hand), and that action automatically succeeds. Unless (!) you challenge that I have the card in my hand. I have to reveal it if I have it, then you lose an Influence for losing the challenge. If you're correct and I don't have the Assassin, you keep your Influence, and I lose an Influence of my choice. Of course, you could also claim you have a Contessa (which blocks Assassins), and now, I have to decide whether or not to challenge your claim.
We played this several times, and I remember winning a couple of hands, as did did some other folks around the table. I think Josh won twice (there was one hand wherein we all just annihilated each other while he just stockpiled Influence, and since my turn was directly after his, I couldn't Coup him before he Coup'ed me, so it was drawn out, but bloody), and I'm pretty confident that Johnnie won and Suf won. Drew might've been the odd man out on this? I love the game because it's short, and it encourages any type of play style. After all, if I'm too aggressive, I just get eliminated early and can play when we start the next hand in a couple of minutes. If I want to stockpile Influence, that could pay off (as it did for Josh when everyone was bloodying everyone else's noses). It's fun, it's fast, and it's a great palate cleanser between bigger games. In my opinion, it's almost a staple for any gaming weekend. Especially when one plans on playing some heavier games. I know I own Coup, but I'm pretty sure we played Drew's copy of this one. So I suspect Drew shares my opinion of the need for Coup.
After playing Coup for a little while, Suf went back to work, Mike continued working, and the rest of us played The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine.
I don't think we all realized just how much this weekend would revolve around space. We're basically bored, selfish billionaires over here, launching ourselves into space...
I'm pretty sure Josh brought this one, but I'm not certain. I will say that this was one of the tougher games of the weekend for me to grasp. It wasn't intrinsically hard! But it's a cooperative trick-taking game (like Hearts or Euchre - which I incidentally didn't know was a thing until attending college at Geneseo, where everyone played Euchre) wherein it's not the number of tricks taken, but who takes them, and when. And communication is limited in a clever way, in which players can reveal one card from their hand per round, and then place a communication token in relation to the card revealed that indicates whether it's the highest, lowest, or only card of that suit they have in their hand. Once I sort of wrapped my brain around it, I really appreciated the thought the designers put into how to make communication difficult but effective. But at the end of the day, this game isn't one I'd pick up for myself. I had fun playing it with this group of people, but I can also see how this game becomes like Magic Maze for me: frustrating with people sort of huffing and indicating things they see, but I still don't see, which causes me to resent that person for being so insistent.
It's a personal bit about me, but growing up, "stupid" was a pretty common insult to throw around. I grew up with some ridiculously smart people. So it was easy enough even then to feel stupid because I was comparing myself and my experiences to those incredibly smart people. It got to a point, for me, where calling someone stupid (or being called stupid) was one of the worst insults one person could level at another. It's invalidating and marginalizing. So on the plus side, I've really eliminated those kinds of insults or even jokes from my vocabulary. Even in anger, I don't call someone stupid, or dumb, or whatever. So I'm grateful for that lesson. But it also means I can be pretty sensitive about it. Games like this, or Magic Maze, or Trivial Pursuit often leave me feeling as though I'm dumb for either not getting something *I should have*, or having people tap the table, then point at me, as though I should know what that means. The Crew sort of features a mechanic that provokes that reaction from me because I end up feeling bad if I screw up the group by not knowing how best to ensure that other people take the right tricks instead of me. So while I had fun learning the game and playing it with this group, it's just not a game for me.
By the time we wrapped up this game, we were approaching evening and Suf was preparing meat and pot pies for dinner. I think. Honestly, this day was just a bit foggy for me, as I was running on about an hour of sleep in the last 36 or something like that. I do know that the *big* game for the day was Forgotten Waters.
Josh had found a copy of this and decided to pick it up as a surprise game (everything else had been shared on a spreadsheet before the weekend to ensure no duplicate games were unnecessarily brought or purchased). It had been on his list for a bit, and it's got a rating of 8.1 on BGG (link here). My general rule of thumb is that if a game is ranked 7.1 or higher on BGG, it's worth trying. There are definitely games ranked lower that I enjoy, as well as games ranked higher that I do not. But in my experience, that's a decent guide. Forgotten Waters is a Crossroads Game (so it exists in the world of Dead of Winter, which we've all enjoyed) in which the players are all pirates seeking fame and glory while also furthering their own personal stories. The game looks really great, and it has a companion app to help run it, both of which are solid selling points. At least, for me, they are. The games I have enjoyed playing that have a companion app (Descent: Second Edition, Imperial Assault, Mansions of Madness: Second Edition, and X-COM) add a dimension to the game that otherwise wouldn't be there, such as a slicker storytelling element (X-COM, racing the players through an alien invasion, putting pressure on them to maintain calm and control in the face of chaos) or an automated game master that is more impressive and streamlined than dice and randomized cards (Descent, buffing monsters during each activation and then prioritizing how they move and attack).
Plus, this game makes us pirates. So, that's reason enough to play, honestly. There is a pretty cool mechanic in which each player is handed a role and a sheet, and we then choose our own names, as well as fill in some mad-lib blanks that will later inform our character's personal history. So far, off to a strong start! Skills are a big part of the game, and so assigning the *right* characters to the tasks they're most likely to accomplish is imperative in order for the party to accomplish our shared goals. This is where, for me, the train goes off the rails a bit. Or rather, it becomes impossible to get the train off the rails.
Ruh-roh. We might have accidentally boarded the express...
To be fair, though, this seems to be what the publisher had in mind, as they said this about the game: The world of Forgotten Waters is silly and magical, with stories designed to encourage players to explore and laugh in delight as they interact with the world around them. It's a game in which every choice can leave a lasting impact on the story, and players will want turn over every rock just to see what they find. So I will absolutely say that it is silly and fun, and that it encourages us to explore and laugh. This is absolutely all true, as we got a lot of laughs out of the first scenario! Again, the narratives (both for the entire group as well as for each individual character) are delightful. But by the time we completed the second scenario, a couple of us (me among them) felt as though we were being railroaded.
That's a term one is more likely to hear with regards to role-playing; it comes up when players feel like no matter what choices they make, the storyteller (or dungeon master or whichever term you prefer) will ensure that the story will unfold the way they want it to unfold. The players feel as though they have no agency because their actions have no meaningful impact on the story. If they fall short on a quest, some random hero will show up out of nowhere to save the day and ensure the quest is fulfilled. If they try to sabotage something in game, a non-player character (NPC) will mysteriously set it straight so that the effort happens anyway. If the players get sneaky and manage to evade an NPC who is clearly intended to be "The Big Boss," the storyteller will find a way to get that "Big Boss" back in the fight so that the players must fight it. Railroading makes players feel more like passengers rather than characters with agency and the ability to impact the world around them. And that's sort of how I came to feel about Forgotten Waters. It was entertaining and I really enjoy the mad libs portion of the game, but I felt railroaded. We meant to come back to it, but never did. It never came up again. I can't and won't speak for the group, but while I'm curious as to what happens next, I'm not curious enough to delve into this again, honestly.
We had played enough of Forgotten Waters that I was nearing my time to crash, though I knew the others would stay up later. I still needed to recover from my drive. But I figured I had a couple more games left in me.
Or at least for another hour or two.
In my next blog post, I'll detail how I wrapped up my first night of Cabin Con 2021 with Infinity Gauntlet Love Letter and Ca$h 'n' Guns. Though, now that I think about it, I think we started Forgotten Waters, then Suf started making dinner, so we switched to Love Letter before eating, then returning to Waters, and then wrapped up with Ca$h 'n' Guns...I'll noodle on it, but I suspect my recollections will only continue to fuzzify with time...
**Just a reminder: if anyone reading this is interested in this most excellent group of adventurers and their exploits, you should check out their Twitter! They're the Champions of Valinwood!
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