Monthly Archives: March 2021

RPG Character Build Reflection

To build an RPG character sheet that described my real-life leadership attributes I used the Dungeon and Dragons template. This was probably one of the more harder assignments for me because I lack experience creating these sheets and didn’t really understand the point system at all. However, I was able to receive and help and advice from two other classmates so hopefully, I’ve done it correctly!

My favorite part of the assignment was the amount of creativity and free reign I had designing my sheet. I enjoyed that I got to rank things like my strengths and personality traits but the thing I most enjoyed was probably the fact that this was an opportunity to brag about all my leadership traits and experiences. Designing your own Character Build is kind of like designing your resume because it’s how you will present yourself in the world! Overall, I think my character sheet is an accurate representation of who I am as both a person and leader.

Buzzfeed LeaderShip Quiz Reflection

For the BuzzFeed assignment, I created a personality quiz that would determine the leadership style that best fits the participant and tells them the corresponding Meeple color. For example, if someone has a democratic leadership style then their results would be the blue meeple. I think all gamers should take a leadership quiz similar to this one because being aware of one’s leadership style can improve everyone’s gaming experience.

I think the hardest part of the assignment was figuring out how to use the quiz software/template and coming up with variable answers so that those who took the quiz didn’t get all the same results. My favorite part of the assignment was definitely receiving everyone’s results and their opinions on what they got. In general, everyone agreed with their colored meeple so my quiz was fairly accurate overall. Something that could be improved upon is increasing the number of questions so that the results are clearer.

Fiasco Playset Reflection

I designed a Fiasco playset (with the help of my father) that was based on the popular Netflix series, the Peaky Blinders. I think the hardest part of the assignment was both the duration of how long it would take to complete and coming up with things like relationships and locations that weren’t too specific or too vague. Creating different six groups of six is harder than you would think. It was very tedious to make sure that none of the relationships or other categories were repetitive and made sense in the overall them of the game.

When creating my own playset I used both the playsets already programmed into TableTopia and other fan-created fiasco sets to give me a sense of the different directions I could guide my game to go. I submitted my assignment in the form of a google doc template but I’m looking forward to finding a way that my family can actually play it. My favorite part was designing something I knew my family would enjoy and could potentially get them hooked on Fiasco. There’s a possibility I may create more playsets in the future because Fiasco is the best game we have played so far in class

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

A week or so ago, we played Incan Gold and Can’t Stop in class, and overall, I enjoyed both games. The theme that week was weighing risk vs. reward, and man, did I feel that. For a leader, considering risk vs. reward is an essential skill to learn because the risk impacts the whole group, but then again, so can the reward. Being placed in a position of leadership, one must toe the line very carefully. You might have to be more reserved than you might typically be to protect the group from harm. In a game sense, Incan Gold and Can’t Stop both emulate, risking it all for a sweet reward.

Incan Gold bursts to the seams with an Indiana Jones aesthetic. The premise is that a team of archaeologists/grave robbers are excavating/plundering an Incan temple for all it is worth. Throughout five rounds, the players delve as far as they can go into the temple, picking up emeralds, obsidian shards, gold nuggets, and the occasional artifact while also trying not to trigger any of the traps of the temple. As the players progress into the temple, they leave small amounts of treasure behind, and thus, the game’s strategic elements become apparent. The first person to flee the temple picks up all the leftover treasure. The further into the temple everyone goes, the more treasure is collected overall, but more traps can trigger. When the second type of trap comes up, any player in the temple loses everything they have gained on that round. The question becomes to delve or not to delve? Incan Gold was a lot more fun for me, even though I ultimately lost. My downfall came from me playing too safe. I was often the first to run back before my two companions would stumble upon a huge score. Can’t Stop, on the other hand, was a very different story.

The version of Can’t Stop that we played looked like it had not changed since its initial debut in the 1980s, but what Can’t Stop lacks in an aesthetic flair it makes up in pure strategy. The players roll dice to determine how quickly they climb up the board. A player wins by having three of their markers reach the top of three separate columns. Each round, after a player moves 3 markers, they can choose to stay or roll again. If the player stays, then their tokens advance to the markers, but if they roll again, they risk the chance to bust and lose all progress. After coming off of my complete defeat in Incan Gold, I decided to throw caution to the wind and go for broke. It was this reckless strategy, coupled with lucky dice rolls, that played me in the lead by the time we had to stop playing. Can’t Stop is my grandparents’ speed much more than Incan Gold because it is not bogged down by complication. The simplicity of the gameplay is Can’t Stop’s key to its longevity.

Game of the Week Blog Reflection 6: Incan Gold and Can’t Stop

This week in Tabletop Leadership we played Incan Gold and Can’t Stop. I think these games are my favorite this semester so far. They were both easy to learn, easy to play, and a lot of fun. They both had risk taking aspects which was why I enjoyed them so much. I like the feeling of being reckless and potentially getting rewarded out of it. I don’t think there was anything hard about the game. I think my family would enjoy Incan Gold very much, including my Niece, because it is easy to learn and we can get a lot of laughs out of it.

The session went really well because my playmates enjoyed both games as well. Personally, I liked Incan Gold better because it had a theme. Can’t Stop was fun because you can take risks but I would often get bored when it wasn’t my turn. I would definitely recommend Incan Gold to my friends and family because we can play it in a party setting. It doesn’t have much strategy or cognitive thinking going on, while Can’t Stop definitely has a lot of strategy with numbers.

Both of these games tie to leadership because being a leader involves taking risks. I found myself in a lot of high risk / high reward situations. In Incan Gold, I would often step up and be the only one furthering my adventure and I got 17 gems all to myself because of that. In Can’t Stop, I didn’t do so well because I wanted to take risks like the first game but refusing to stop left me back to where I started. In leadership, it is good to take risks for a high reward, but if you get too risky you can lose a lot of progress.

What Type of Gamer Am I?

I have never been much of a board game player. I play every once in a while and only in social settings. I am never one to suggest playing a board game, but I am willing to if I see that we can have good fun out of it. After taking this test I learned a lot about what my motivation is to play board games compared to others.

In the first category, I received a 37% conflict and 74% social manipulation. I have never been a very competitive person. I think playing with very competitive people usually takes the fun out of it for me. I look to have fun and laugh while playing board games instead of trying to win. Social manipulation scored high because I think it is fun to bluff or deceive the other players. It’s different from being competitive because you can laugh about tricking your friends and it makes the game interesting.

In the next category, I received a 18% strategy and 4% discovery. I tend to prefer more relaxed games with less cognitive challenges involved. I like more fast-paced games that don’t require a lot of pondering for each move. Discovery was my lowest score on the test and that is because I don’t like to take the time and learn complex game mechanics. I prefer traditional gameplay that is easy and familiar.

Next, I received a 60% immersion and 44% aesthetics. I definitely enjoy immersion in board games and other aspects of entertainment. I want to feel like I am a part of something that is out of this world. Having the ability to become a character while playing a boardgame is fun, but I don’t want to spend the time learning an extensive background or complex stats about my character. To me, aesthetics is a plus, but it is not necessarily important. I feel that aesthetics helps a little bit with immersion so I will never complain about that.

Finally, my highest score on the test is a 84% social fun. This is my main reason why I’d participate in a board game. I enjoy having fun with other people. It is not about winning to me, but just enjoying the process with friends and having a good laugh. I also scored a 58% cooperation because I believe it can be fun to work together with your friends to reach a common goal. It is always satisfying when you work with someone else to beat another group of people. Even though I scored low on conflict, working with someone else can really enhance the social fun aspect of a board games when you are cooperating with your peers.

Game of the Week Blog Reflection: Incan Gold and Can’t Stop

This week, we played two games during the class session. They are called Incan Gold and Can’t stop. For the Incan Gold, the whole round has five small rounds, for each small round, players will decide to continue their adventure to gain more golds or quit to make sure they do not lose their golds for this small round. After these five small rounds, the player who owns the most golds win the game. For the Can’t stop, players had to roll four dices and add each two of them up as they want. Players will move their pawns based on the numbers (sum) they get, each number has a column and the player who reaches the top of any three number’s columns will win the game.

During the class session, our group first played the game Incan Gold. I think the hardest point of playing Incan Gold is you need to think whether to take risks to gain more golds or quite to maintain your golds, and you also need to think what other players will do. For example, in the second small round, one of our group members decided to quit when we met the first hurdle, because the rule is if you met the same hurdle twice, you will die and you will lose all the golds you gain during this small round. Me and another player decided to continue until we met the second hurdle, but this is not the same as the first hurdle. So, another group member decided to quit because we already met two different hurdles, and the risk of continuing becomes double. However, I am a person who likes to take risks, so I chose to continue, fortunately I gained 11 more golds in the next scene, since I was the only player left, I got all the 11 golds. However, on the fourth round, I lost all my golds for the round because I took the risks.

For the game Can’t stop, I think the hardest point is also to make a good strategy of taking risks. In this game, there are some short columns like 2 and 12 which only have 3 or 4 steps to win, but 2 and 12 are very difficult to get. There are also some long columns like 6,7, and 8, which need 8,9 or 10 steps to win. So, making a good strategy about the combination of high-risk columns and low-risk columns are very important. One of our group members did a great job on this, he chose the columns of 4, 8, and 12, which included high-risk column (12), low-risk column (8) and the middle-risk column (4), and he won this game during the session.

I think these two games went very well in our group. We all had a great time during the class sessions. As the same of other classmates said, I also think that Incan gold might be a little bit more interesting than Can’t stop since it has a sense adventure but not just count the sum of two dices.

I think the leadership aspects of these two games are the ability to keep calm thought and the courage to take risks. As a leader, you must keep a calm thought when you make choices because your decisions will influence not only you but the people around you. Leaders should always make the choices based on the situation they are in, so it is important to keep calm when you make choices. A leader also needs to have the courage to take risks when it is necessary, because leaders should always take the responsibility of failure.

Game of the Week Blog: Incan Gold and Can’t Stop

This week in class we played two relatively quick games, Incan Gold and Can’t Stop. Incan Gold is a multiplayer card game that is perfect for those that love to take risks and push their luck. To play you shuffle the deck and someone deals by flipping over a card revealing either a trap or treasure. Each player then splits the treasure they gain and then on the count of three everyone decides whether or not they want to push their luck and continue deeper into the temple for more treasure and artifacts or bail out with whatever they had. Can’t Stop is a mixture between a dice and a board game because you roll the dice to move your pawns on the board and the goal is to take over three columns. However, it is also a kind of risky game because if you don’t roll the numbers you need you cannot complete your turn and it is a race between other players.

The hardest part of Incan Gold was trying to maintain a realistic and logical mindset because similar to poker the game becomes addictive really fast and you begin not to carefully weigh out the risk to benefit ratio when playing. One of the players in my group constantly played it safe while the rest of us kept risking our loot in the hopes of gaining more, because of this the safe player ended up winning both of the rounds we played. So I definitely need to work on my strategy for that game! The hardest part of Can’t Stop was trying to be present while playing because I did not like this game at all. It’s basically just a math and chance game with no story or plotline and because it was boring I didn’t care whether I won or lost which is not something you want when playing. I would recommend Incan Gold to everyone and Can’t Stop to maybe my grandparents if I had to.

I think the two biggest leadership aspects in this week’s games would be decisiveness and integrity. For example, In Incan Gold, all the players need to decide at the same time if they are bailing or continuing deeper into the temple. If you cannot demonstrate the ability to make decisions under extreme pressure you cannot be a great leader and you are also not helping maintain the easy playing flow of the game. A clear example of integrity can be found once again in Incan Gold, everyone wants to win and I witnessed players make their decisions based upon what they thought another player was going to do. One player in my group made the decision to bail out because he knew the player who always played it safe was going to do that as well and in doing this he would ensure that no one got the treasures. Some would argue that it was simply strategy but I would argue that it calls your character into question when you would knowingly choose to lose just to stop someone from winning or gaining more from an opportunity than you.

Game of the Week Blog Reflection 5: Fiasco Week 3

This week in Tabletop Leadership, we continued playing Fiasco. In this session, we were able to complete Act 2 and the Aftermath. The hard part about this week was the wrapping up the storyline. I am not very good at making up stories, but my playmates did a good job helping me through it. I tended to have my character only experience bad things. I ended up with all black die and my tilt choice was “Something bad will change your life forever”. This caused my character to not have a happy ending at all and he ended up in jail.

Overall, the play session of Fiasco over the last 3 weeks was a really good time. I enjoyed the story we came up with because my playmates had really great ideas. I probably wouldn’t play again just because it isn’t my style of game, however, if I were to play again I would be able to come up with a much better story now that I have a good feel for the game. I would recommend this game to my friends that are very creative. I mentioned my friend Alex in the previous weeks but I think it would be good for any of my friends who have a creative mind. You can really come up with some intricate stories if you play with creative people.

This game ties to leadership because you can really take control of the group if you choose to do so. That is something I needed work on because I couldn’t figure out how to move my character’s story along. A good leader would be able to develop the story in a way that they want to because they have to influence the group and how the rest of the story unfolds.

What Type of Gamer Am I?

Overall, I agree with Quantic Foundery’s assessment of my inner gamer. As long as everyone is having fun while also focusing on the game itself, I end up having a blast. The only part of this assessment that differed from my expectations was the limited strategy and discovery. I love building a strategy up in a persona in social deduction games, working with other players to stop some disaster, or trying to build the best dungeon in that sense of the word. I think I scored low on this aspect because I do not enjoy deckbuilding or the likes of Warhammer 40K. The long-term strategy games do not do well at holding my attention.

On the other hand, short social deduction games like One Night Ultimate Werewolf or Secret Hitler are right up my alley. Whether it be in a TTRPG or a smaller roleplaying game like the ones above, I love bringing a character to life. It is so fun when everyone comes together and adopts a character for the evening. Games like Fiasco are right up my alley for this very purpose.

The aesthetic of a game can further elevate it from good to great. One prominent example of this type of elevation would be the Call of Cthulu roleplaying game set during the Roaring Twenties. Solving occult mysteries while drinking at a speakeasy with the police captain is reminiscent of such a specific period that the aesthetic could not replicate it in any other setting. Looking at the game art can serve as a great way to feel the immersion of whatever environment you find yourself in. It is another way to understand how the game makers wanted you to feel while playing it.