Monthly Archives: December 2020

Game of the Week: DND Week 1

For this session, we played the first session in our three week Dungeons and Dragons campaign. Dungeons and Dragons is an RPG game that sets the player up in a fantasy world, and you explore while trying to battle monsters and accomplish the goals of the team. For our group, we had five players, along with one person DMing the game so that we could get through the story.

For this first week, we mainly focused on getting introduced to the game. Both I and another player were completely new to the game, so we had to spend a bit of time getting the mechanics and everything about the game explained to us. When we started the story, it was pretty fun. The most we got through in the session was exploring the toppled wagon/cart and then almost completing a battle with some goblins (who almost killed one of our players).

I really enjoyed playing DnD for the first time. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a very long time, but have never had the opportunity for. For recommendations, I’d really like to play this with my roommate Aja. She likes games like this and I’d love to play it with her. Honestly, the hardest part of this session was figuring out how the rolls worked. It confused me a lot but after listening to the more experienced players do it, I started to understand it a little more. Lastly, for leadership, I think DnD shows that leaders can have many different abilities and that other people can help you with this. Stats are a big thing in this game, and a leader might not have everything they need to complete a scenario in the best way so they need to rely on other people around them.

Tabletop Thursdays, Week 10: Free Play Week 2

For this week in EDL 290T, our class had a free play week. I joined up with three others to play the game Honey Heist. Honey Heist is a short role-playing game where all the characters are bears going to the big honey convention trying to steal the motherlode. There’s two problems with this: there’s a complicated plan relying on precise timing, and you’re a bear. All players have two stats: Bear vs. Criminal, with points between the two shifting depending on player actions. Players that go full criminal or full bear lose the game, so players have to balance their stats while working to pull off the heist.

In this play session, we had a variety of roles: a polar bear, a grizzly bear, a panda, and a honey badger. Over the course of the play session, we broke into the manor for the convention, snuck into the ballroom, nearly got caught by security, did some dancing, committed identity fraud, played guitar, went full-on grand theft auto, distracted a rival bear gang, and ultimately yanked the honey fountain out of the manor with a chain. Though it was a roller coaster, it was ultimately a success with only one of the group getting caught. It was chaotic but a lot of fun and relied heavily on improvisation, which is an element of games I tend to enjoy. The most difficult part of the game was setting up which characters were doing what and tracking where everyone was after the group got split up. Overall, it was a really fun way to spend a class and I’d like to play it again.

The game ties in with leadership because leadership can have a lot of improvisation – even the best laid plans can fly out the window and descend into chaos, so knowing how to navigate chaos and keep a level head is important. I would like to get some of my friends who did improv with me in high school to try this, because I think this is exactly the sort of chaos they’d enjoy.

Week 12 (Ladies and Gentlemen)

This week we played Ladies and Gentlemen a game about buying and selling stocks and using that money to purchase clothing, maids, and accessories. This game is all about cooperation as two players are working together. Cooperation is also the biggest tie to leadership this game has. In this game cooperation and communication are the very important to understand what goals your teammates is attempting to achieve and whether or not you are able to take certain actions in the game. How this game makes you work together is complicated and definitely the hardest part of this game.

This game is played in teams of two where the people together on a team do not know what the other is doing. The gentlemen buy and sell stocks as well as paying for whatever the lady brings to them to buy. The ladies job is to pick out the best outfit, accessories, and help for the ball that is several days away. The part that makes all of this difficult is that the players are not allowed to specifically tell the other what they are trying to do or what they have. For the ladies it makes it hard to pick out products that the gentlemen will have the resources to purchase and for the gentlemen it means they don’t know whether or not to actually purchase a product. Why would a gentlemen not want to purchase a product? Well as a person who played as the lady I personally would pick items from a shop that my opponent was also shopping at that I thought would hinder them most if I could so that they wouldn’t get all the products that they desired. Communicating that I didn’t actually desire the outfit was difficult to tell my teammate. I think this game is a lot of fun and would recommend this to many different people.

One person I would recommend to play this game mostly because I want to play with them is my friend Jacob. This game is a fun game to play with other players and playing it with another person who I know well would be a lot of fun to figure out what strategies exist that we could use. It would also be fun to play with my friend and to mess with them in a way that works strategically but looks sporadic such as to confuse my friend.

Tabletop Thursdays, Week 9: Ladies and Gentlemen.

This week in EDL 290T, our class played the game Ladies & Gentlemen. Ladies & Gentlemen is a game that has players working both individually and as teams. The players that choose to play as ladies must go to the shops and purchase servants or outfits for an upcoming ball while making sure not to own pieces from more than two designers. The gentlemen work on the stock market and fulfill trade deals, then use the money they make to buy their ladies outfits. The team that manages to earn the most stars by completing the fanciest outfit, having the most servants, and completing the most trade deals wins the game.

In my group, I played as a gentleman. I enjoyed the challenge of trying to pick out the stocks that I needed to complete trade deals, since those were worth more cash than I could scrounge up on my own just by selling products individually. It took me and my partner a while to be able to put together the outfit and it was mildly frustrating at times to not be able to buy all the things we wanted, but in the end we did alright as new players of the game. The game was pretty straightforward and I liked how there was both an individualistic side and a team gameplay aspect. I would’ve liked one or two more rounds to play to get the hang of the game or the opportunity to play as a lady but it was still fun. The hardest part was planning the budget so I could get the best deals and still buy the best outfit for my partner, but after figuring out how the market worked it got a lot easier.

The game was important because it focused on stepping out of our typical more comfortable roles into ones we might not normally associate ourselves with – for example, I wouldn’t normally play a male character but I enjoyed trying that out this time. As leaders, we may need to step out of our comfort zones sometimes to be as effective as possible at our jobs so practicing this via tabletop game was a fun step towards doing that for me.

I would recommend this game to people like my mom, who enjoy historical time periods (since this is set sometime that’s either Victorian or Edwardian) and semi-cooperative gameplay. It was a fun game to try and I may eventually get it for myself once I have the chance to shop for things again.

Game of the Week: Free Play 2

For this session, I grouped up with a few others to play the popular game “Among Us.” This is a fun video game where you and your crew are in space and your goal is to do tasks around the ship. However, the twist is that there are impostors on the ship who want to kill all the regular crewmates.

Our play session went alright. There were 6 of us in the group, which is enough for a full game (usually with only one person being the impostor), but it got kinda boring with just the 6 of us. We eventually opened the lobby up to the public, which is always an interesting experience in this game. We got a few bad apples that joined, but we kicked them as soon as we were able and played with the people who were cool. Something else that was fun to help with was that two of the people in our group had never played the game, so we had to teach them about it.

Overall, this was a very chill week. I’ve played the game before, and I really enjoy it, but if I had to recommend it to someone, I think I would recommend it to my friend Benny who might enjoy it. The hardest part of the game wasn’t actually hard but more frustrating and funny when one of the new players exposed me as the other impostor. I think leadership ties into this game in the way that leaders still need to do everyday tasks/challenges and they aren’t always exempt because they’re a leader.

Game of the Week: Free Play 1

For this session, we had a week to play whatever game we wanted. For my game, I grouped up with 4 other people and we played a one-shot RPG called “Lasers and Feelings.” This was an RPG about a crew of adventurers on a space ship trying to tackle an evil threat while the captain was healing.

Our play session went pretty well and I had a lot of fun! I’d definitely recommend this to my friend Austin, who loves sci-fi and RPGs. What I loved was that we got to choose our characters and what they looked/acted like. I got to play a what was definitely not a dragonborn, because he had wings! We introduced our characters to each other and figured out how we all knew each other in game. The game went pretty smoothly, but the ending was a tad rushed since we didn’t have enough time to figure out exactly how we had beaten the evil threat but it was defeated nonetheless!

I thought the game was decently easy (after having experience from playing Fiasco). The hardest part was at the beginning, when a couple of us were confused on whether our rolls landed due to them having to be either above or below our lasers or feelings characteristic. This game relates to leadership in the way most RPGs do. It lets you be the person you’ve always wanted to be, and lets you take charge in situations you might not normally be in.

Tabletop Thursdays, Week 8: Dungeons and Dragons Week 3

This week in EDL 290T, our class started a three-part Dungeons & Dragons campaign. As discussed in my previous post, Dungeons & Dragons is a role-playing game that allows for players to create their own characters from a variety of classes, races, and backgrounds. A Dungeon Master, or DM, guides players through their journey as they work through the campaign with fighting, healing, and skill checks being parts of the gameplay. There’s room for improvisation, too, since players can talk among themselves and take a story totally off the rails if they want to.

In this week’s campaign, we started off with a fight with the goblin boss. After some trial and error, we managed to defeat him, but not without losing our goblin guide, Rushwater. After that, we raided the crates in the main room and took some of the provisions with us. We managed to rescue one of our bosses and resumed our journey onto the original destination. After reaching the destination, we received our pay and got to level up our characters.

This week’s campaign taught us about how working to overcome one big obstacle can be intimidating, but having your team’s back is important as a leader because being supportive can make the difference between succeeding and failing at a big goal. I’d recommend trying D&D to anyone who likes fantasy gaming and role-playing or interacting with people while playing to cooperatively reach a goal.

Free Play Week 2 (Honey Heist)

This week we played a game called Honey Heist. Honey Heist is a game where the players play as bears. In this game you have to understand your character and this ties to the leadership trait of knowing ones self. Knowing what your own goals and traits are is important to understand what you need to do to be a good leader. This game does a good job of making this easy to understand because for the bears your goal is to just try to obtain honey without becoming to bearish or a straight up criminal. While goals may vary a little bit more in real life the concept remains the same. But in Honey Heist how do you obtain this honey?

To obtain honey in Honey Heist is in some cases quite difficult. Honey Heist is a roleplaying game where almost every success and failure is decided by a six sided dice. In the game I played I was a Scottish grizzly bear named Scotty o’Mara and I was a retired hacker. The goal for my group was to steal a honey fountain from a mansion across a bridge. While in the end we succeeded my bear was the only one who didn’t make it out and was put in Bear jail. Overall I had a lot of fun playing the game but struggled with several mechanics. The most difficult part of the game was that although we had a clear goal there was no clear path to reach the goal. The plan for the heist was entirely up to the imagination which left a limitless number of options for us to steal the fountain however it did not give us any clear paths to reach the fountain. This mechanic made the game interesting as well because none of the players really had a good idea of what the other players were planning.

If I had to recommend this game to anyone I would probably recommend it to my friend Jacob. Jacob already enjoys the game Dungeons and Dragons and I think they would also enjoy this game because it allows for similar role playing mechanics as well as the chance that comes from rolling the dice. I would also recommend this game to my Mom for the same reasons I would recommend this game to Jacob. Overall I think this game would be a lot of fun to play with a group of friends.

Game of the Week: Incan Gold/Can’t Stop

For the session this week we played two “quick” games about luck in small groups. The first game was Can’t Stop, which is a game involving dice where you keep pressing your luck to roll the number(s) needed to advance up the rows you’re in. However, you can press your luck too far and end up with nothing you can use and get reset to the beginning. The second game was Incan Gold. This is a game where you go through a dungeon with your team and try to collect the most amount of treasure while not encountering two of the same trap.

Our play session went pretty well for these games. The one issue we had though, was time constraint. We played a few games of Can’t Stop, but didn’t have enough time to finish our game of Incan Gold. For Can’t Stop, I won the first game, but after that I kept losing and kept falling back down after pressing my luck too far. For Incan Gold, I was the one that kept going through the dungeon and wound up with the most treasure at the end. Out of the two, Incan Gold was my favorite, and I think my little brother would really like this game.

Risk taking is a big part of these games. I was hesitant when we first started playing to keep taking risks, but after I won my first game of Can’t Stop, I felt less hesitant and went for it more. Each time I had a successful round, it made me want to keep pushing my luck. However, the hardest part was making myself keep pushing the limits when I constantly kept losing. I think this is incredibly similar to how you approach leadership. One of the qualities of being a leader is being willing to take risks. They might not always work out, but it’s important to keep trying and not give up.