Tabletop Corner!

COMaestro

Veteran
Noticed that the thread introducing Tabletop Corner has vanished. Has it been decided to discontinue this feature? I understand if that's the case, as GR is definitely a site focused on video games, but I did enjoy what there was of it.

EDIT: I guess this is the new thread for Tabletop Corner. Talk about board games you are playing, ones you are interested in knowing more about, ideas for games for Paul to review once he has the time again, etc.!
 
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I really enjoyed writing Tabletop Corner and I'm hoping to bring it back eventually. Unfortunately, I'm super busy right now, and as it was specifically my thing I haven't had the time to put into it.

Also, that portion of the forum was deleted to just make it look tidier, not because Tabletop Corner is gone. I'm glad you were enjoying it, though!
 
Good idea! So, I guess we start... discussing tabletop games?

I recently bought DropMix, which is kinda a tabletop game, I guess? It's a rhythm-action game from Harmonix where you put down cards that create music on the fly. It uses licensed music, with you mixing certain tracks together to gain extra points. It's a little pricey and buying the booster packs seems like it would be a pain (I'm still getting my use out of the starter set), but it's very cool technology. Some of the songs you can create are mind-numbingly awful, but mixing together instruments and vocals that work is surprisingly satisfying.
 
Helped a friend test out Merchants and Marauders tonight. It was fun, though a lot of interactivity was lost between NPCs and us, despite playing as if there were four players. We're going to test it a bit more and possibly house rule to create more pirates, as event cards feel like they should matter and simply dropping a pirate on top of a pirate card does nothing to make the game more intense...apparently only two pirates ever existed at once in the Caribbean.
 
So, I've played many games over the years, and own a whole bunch of them, but I think it's a good idea when presenting board games to people who may have not been exposed to newer games (i.e. things that aren't Monopoly, Clue, Risk, Sorry, etc.) to choose games that are relatively easy to pick up and understand the goal. So, as time permits, I'm going to basically do what Paul was doing with Tabletop Corner on the main site, but just here in the forum. I'll also try to only deal with games that are still readily available for purchase.

To start with, I'm going to talk about Sheriff of Nottingham.

SoN_Components.png


Do you like to make deals? Bluff? Lie to you friends, or even perfect strangers? Well, do I have the game for you!

Sheriff of Nottingham is a game of bluffing and deal-making for 3-5 players. Each round, one player takes the role of the sheriff, performing inspections at the gates of Nottingham. The other players play the role of merchants, bringing their goods inside the town to display in the marketplace. Goods are represented by cards, showing the legal goods of apples, bread, cheese and chickens. Additionally, there are cards representing contraband goods, such as silk, pepper, mead and crossbows.

All players have a little bag in which they can place cards. The merchants will pick up to five cards from their hand and place them into their bags, snapping them closed. Then, one at a time, they must look the Sheriff player in the eye, hand them their bag, and declare one legal good and the correct number of cards within their bag. Once all merchants have declared their goods to the Sheriff, the inspection phase begins, where he or she decides whether or not to trust each merchant.

If the Sheriff trusts the merchant, he or she gives back the bag, which is then opened and the merchant reveals any legal goods in the bag and puts them in their stand (whether the goods are what the merchant claimed or not), and any contraband is placed face down in their stand. If the Sheriff doesn't believe the merchant, then he or she snaps open the bag and looks at the cards inside. If the merchant was truthful, the Sheriff pays that merchant a penalty fee. However, if anything in the bag is different than what was claimed, the merchant gets to keep anything that matches their claim, but pays the Sheriff a penalty fee for the goods that were not declared. Once all bags have been dealt with, the role of the Sheriff passes to a new player and a new round begins.

So, the bluffing aspect is rather obvious, but what about the deal-making? Well, during the inspection phase, the merchants can offer the Sheriff just about anything in order to get their bag through without being opened. Alternately, the Sheriff can request whatever in return for letting the bag through. Money, goods from the merchant's stand, or goods that may or may not be within the bag are perfectly acceptable bribes. A player can even pay the Sheriff to open another player's bag! Once a deal has been made, it must be honored. Similarly, as soon as a bag has returned to a merchant's hand or the snap of the bag has been opened, no deal can be made between that player and the Sheriff.

The game is played until each player has been the Sheriff twice (three times in a three player game). Goods are worth different values, and there are also bonuses for each legal good, granting the person with the most of any good the king bonus, and then the queen bonus goes to the player with the next highest number of that good. Add up all these values along with the player's remaining gold for their final score, highest score wins. The scoring aspect is probably the worst part of the game, but there is a handy and official free app that assists with the scoring and also has a timer for the Sheriff inspection phase to keep the game moving along.

Everyone I have introduced Sheriff of Nottingham to has had a great time with it. Trying to read who is lying to you, hoping you can bluff the Sheriff into not opening your bag, or even bluff them into opening your bag so that you get that sweet, sweet penalty money, it's all fun! Recently an expansion has been released that adds a sixth player and a number of other modular expansions, such as deputies, a black market and the Merry Men. Haven't had the chance to try it yet, so I have no idea if it's worth the extra investment, but just being able to support a sixth player makes it very appealing.

If you ever have the chance, I highly recommend giving Sheriff of Nottingham a try.
 
Excellent post! Perhaps we could use this for a more community-driven Tabletop Corner on our front page? Thoughts?
 
I would love to make a board game. I'm one of those idiots who has way too many ideas in their head, thinking they could be successful but ultimately is too lazy to try and doesn't have a shit clue on where to start.

I used to make my own board games as a kid. :p Always inspired by Heroes Quest. Man, I love that game.
 
I would love to make a board game. I'm one of those idiots who has way too many ideas in their head, thinking they could be successful but ultimately is too lazy to try and doesn't have a shit clue on where to start.

I used to make my own board games as a kid. :p Always inspired by Heroes Quest. Man, I love that game.

Here, try this. It's recorded lectures and stuff from an MIT game design class.

https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/compara...iting/cms-608-game-design-fall-2010/index.htm
 
Ooh I just posted on sheriff of Nottingham post. Good work! I think my question has been answered from this thread.

I not much of a writer but I will do a couple of write ups to contribute to this awesome segment. Probably on Talisman (possibly my fav board game at the moment) and maybe pathfinder, although it's been around for so long it'd be hard to know what to focus on. I also recently got "hero kids" to play with my daughter, I don't know how many visitors here have kids but it's a cheap and really fun pen and paper rpg geared to kids.
 
Ooh I just posted on sheriff of Nottingham post. Good work! I think my question has been answered from this thread.

I not much of a writer but I will do a couple of write ups to contribute to this awesome segment. Probably on Talisman (possibly my fav board game at the moment) and maybe pathfinder, although it's been around for so long it'd be hard to know what to focus on. I also recently got "hero kids" to play with my daughter, I don't know how many visitors here have kids but it's a cheap and really fun pen and paper rpg geared to kids.

I played a ton of Talisman second edition back in high school. Still have my copy of it, along with a couple of the expansions. Good memories, but I definitely see the flaws in the game now. Still fun when you're in the right mindset.
 
I played a ton of Talisman second edition back in high school. Still have my copy of it, along with a couple of the expansions. Good memories, but I definitely see the flaws in the game now. Still fun when you're in the right mindset.

I've got 4e with The Dungeon, The Highlands and Woodland expansions. I'd be interested to see how different it is from 2e to 4e but the game is a lot of fun. Once me and the roommates got a few games under our belts, there's clearly some balance issues, certain characters are FAR superior than others, some to the point of us simply randomizing character selection rather then taking turns picking. Admittedly, the game relies heavily on the randomness of die rolls, but I think that makes it fun and puts everyone (new players included) on even playing fields for the most part.
 
I had the third edition of Talisman. That game was fun until it became a chore of rolling the exact number to get to the next area. It's fine at first, but that became a somewhat miserable experience that turned an hour/90-minute game into a 4.5 hour slog. Along with Runebound, those are games I feel I really enjoyed up until some aspect of it mucked it up for me completely.

I'm always going to be an Arkham Horror fanboy. Yeah, I know they've released all this other stuff since then, but I have a lot of love for AH and most of its expansions -- so much so that I've made a number of fictional challenges in place of Outer Gods or Elder Ones, as well as a slew of playable characters based off sci-fi and horror protagonists in both movies and video games.
 

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