A Groovy Gander at Swinging Jivecat

07.14.12

Hey-o all you hepcats and bouncing Betties – get ready to lay your peepers on some super jazzy card art! As most of you dear readers know, Clever Mojo Games’s Swinging Jivecat Voodoo Lounge is one of my most anticipated future releases. Having played it several times now – and loving every minute of it – I’m super excited to see and share some of artist Sergi Marcet’s art for the cards in SJVL.

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The State of Games, Episode 32 – The One About Culling and Critics

07.10.12

Sometimes it’s just nice to be able to sit and talk to your best friend about board games and having fun – and that’s precisely what Monkey and I did on this episode of the State of Games. No guests, no retelling of adventures at the last convention, just the two of us spending an hour of quality time chatting about the good stuff and reaffirming our love for this great hobby. Join us – we’ve missed you.

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Just the Facts: Richard Launius Spills About Ace Detective

07.02.12

All of you dear readers are probably familiar with my zest for zeppelins and my love of all things Lovecraft, but I also have another vice – pulp, gritty noir, and the darker the better. Luckily for me, my favorite purveyor of prized Lovecraftian gameplay, Richard Launius, has thrown a touch of Howard Philips in with a truckload of pulp private investigators in Ace Detective, currently on Kickstarter. Curious to know more – and knowing quite a few of you would be, as well – Richard was gracious enough to give us some clues about his newest caper.

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Dice Hate Me: So, Ace Detective is a storytelling game, set in the world of 1940s pulp noir. The gameplay seems a bit more subjective than most of your other designs, and there is only one six-sided die in the game. How did Ace Detective develop? How was it born?

Richard Launius: The idea for Ace Detective came to me a few years after I had completed the original design of Arkham Horror. I had been reading several Dashiell Hammett stories and had always liked the gritty detective stuff. Additionally, my children were young at the time and we always played a story telling game when traveling, one where I would start a story and then have them interject the next key event and then I would add that to the story. It was fun for everyone, and something in the age of smart phones and hand held electronic games to fondly remember simpler times. While most of those family travel stories were fairy-tale in nature “The knight wandering through a dark forest came upon” and one of the kids would add Giant Frog, and “a giant frog singing a song and playing a harp.” – you get the idea. Thinking about these travel tales prompted the idea for a game in which the players used cards to craft a story collectively, and the gritty, noir detective mysteries that I liked seemed to be the perfect setting. Thus, the first rendition of Ace Detective was created.

The game was to create a simple framework to entertain the players by telling stories. In this case, there would be a mystery; a crime in which the players would navigate the hardboiled detective lead character through the story using cards with key words depicting People, Places, Mood, Action, and Clues that would comprise the story. There are pre-established Suspects to each mystery and the players work to place Clue Tokens on them as the story unfolds, and those clues ultimately determine the guilty party and the winner of the game. But even though there is a game being played in the placing of clues, to management of players’ cards and plot points (which are the currency of the game), the real fun is in the storytelling. It should be understood by all that the game is not a deductive detective game where players are working to identify a predetermined guilty person. There is some deduction and strategic play, but it comes in the playing of clue tokens on the 4 suspects for the crime, and figuring out how the other players are playing their clue tokens and the value of each. Players that do this well will best use their Clues placement to insure that at the end of the game they have the most tokens on the guilty party. To do that the players need to tell good, entertaining stories that gain them the essential Plot Points to place Clues, buy new cards, and use Special cards effectively.
So, to wrap up a long answer, the game was born with the idea that game play would be more about creative story telling in noir worlds of Chandler and Hammett, and set in a time period that I find fascinating – the period right before the United States enters WWII and in a town that is a great setting for mysteries – San Francisco.

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Ye Olde Meat and Potatoes – A Lyssan Guest Review

06.28.12

Today on Dice Hate Me, we’re lucky to have a guest review by the most excellent and always helpful Marc Specter. Marc takes a look at Lyssan – a sprawling boardgame that racked up some nice funding last year on Kickstarter, at about the same time as Carnival. So grab ye some mead, dear readers, and dig into this special feast!

The arrival of Lyssan is upon us.  As team leader of the group that was privileged to run Lyssan at Origins this year,  I feel it incumbent upon me to provide you, gentle gamer, a preview of your next great game.

We play in a time where few games make it to the table more than a few times, and where the new hotness is taking the shelf space as the old hotness leaves it.  Lyssan is not the fast food gaming experience.  Lyssan is the multi-course meal, to be savored for the experience, and whose depth can only be appreciated with reflection and re-engagement.  The great thing is that as games go, Lyssan deserves to be played repeatedly.

Lyssan invites you into its story: a kingdom in strife for 200 years, now 4 forces have arisen, one of whom will finally seize control of the kingdom and lead it into the next great era.  Will it be the faction that you control?  Take the role of the Wolf, Hawk, Vulture, or Council and control your knights, nobles, priests, and spies in a bid for Triumphs.  Claiming these triumphs will make you the ultimate ruler, and your enemies will be no more, shamed into oblivion.

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A Smashing Good Chat with Todd Rowland of AEG

06.26.12

Dice Hate Me and Go Forth and Game have joined forces to bring you some of the best gaming interviews on the web! That’s right, from time to time here on Dice Hate Me, Tom Gurganus will contribute one of his comprehensive conversations. In this interview, Tom sits down for a chat with Todd Rowland, senior brand manager for AEG, to discuss how he got started gaming and some of the exciting projects coming up, like Smash-Up and the Tempest series. Enjoy the interview and be sure to let us know if there are other designers, artists or gaming insiders that you would like to know more about!

Tom: Todd, thanks for being my guest on Go Forth And Game. How did you get into gaming?

Todd Rowland: Long ago I was primarily a CCG player, though I did get into role-playing games thanks to Mike Webb and the gang back at Gamemasters, which was our local game store when I lived in Memphis. After several years I found myself at Gen Con, handing my resume to John Zinser, which brings me to your next question…

Tom: How did you got involved with AEG?

Todd: I was a big L5R player, very involved in the community, playtest for the CCG, etc. After a while I did get my resume to John, who after several months contacted me and offered me the chance to manage the Warlord CCG, which AEG published at the time. Luckily my wife was supportive of a move across the country and I went for it. That was about eight years ago.

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DHMG Just Keeps On Truckin’

06.25.12

Alright, it’s time to load up and put the hammer down, ’cause Dice Hate Me Games has another great game headed your way! We’re proud to announce that game designer Jason Kotarski will be joining the DHMG family with his crafty cubes and cards game, The Great Heartland Hauling Co.

In The Great Heartland Hauling Co. players take on the role of medium haul Midwest truck drivers doing their best to make a living by hauling goods for big suppliers. Players truck to various locations around America’s Heartland, picking up and dropping off goods using matching cards from their hands. Most locations have native goods that require fewer cards to load; other locations may pay a premium for those goods but may also require more fuel – and time – to get there with the cargo. With limited space in each trailer and only five cards in hand at a time, players will have to expertly manage their resources, as well as play the odds and press their luck to be the best trucker on the road.

We’ll be sharing a lot more about Heartland in the next few weeks as we ramp up for a late july Kickstarter campaign. We have a lot of cool art to show off, more game play to dig into and the story of how Jason came up with the game – and how we met Jason. Stay tuned, it’s going to be an exciting summer!

The State of Games, Episode 31 – The One About Origins, Chemistry and The Big Blue Noodle

06.11.12

This is a really big show about a Really Big Show – namely, Origins Game Fair. Ok, so it wasn’t as Really Big as it usually is because of a date change and gamer malaise and rampaging pomeranians… but we’ll get to all that. Regardless, we had a blast at Origins, and it was awesome getting to meet and play with a whole bunch of you. At any rate, get comfortable – we’ve got a whole lotta podcast for ya!

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