Author Archives: mcgregce

Free Play (Week 2)

For free play week 2, me and a few other classmates played Among Us. This game is so trendy right now and has been everywhere over social media, yet this was my first time giving it a shot and I had a lot of fun playing. Of course, the first game I was an imposter and I had no idea what to do. In the very first round I used a vent in front of everybody and was called out as an imposter almost immediately, so that didn’t go very well for me. After that though, I started to build an understanding for strategy began to play better. I was only imposter once more throughout the session and ended up winning with another player.

We played in public lobbies to get more players and that was an experience in its own. I recommend turning on censor chat because some people can be straight up toxic nowadays. Other people were really nice and played the game cooperatively which was good to see. I can see why people are honestly addicted to this game. It is simple, it goes by relatively fast, and has a cheeky component of strategy and lying to other players to win the game. You never really know the truth (unless you were by the crime scene) which makes it difficult to pinpoint an imposter.

In terms of leadership, I was not one of them. leadership arises from people that have played this game a lot because they know the map and tend to know where most players were during a round. They help facilitate discussion when a body is reported. They also tend to make fantastic liars when they are imposter. This game was actually very fun and I would recommend it to others, plus, it’s free to play!

Ladies and Gentlemen

This game was my least favorite of all in class. I think it had potential to be more fun but my group seemed rather unmotivated and not many people knew the rules. However, we still managed to laugh and have fun. I played the role of a lady and I think I had more fun this way than playing a gentleman. It’s comical playing the role of the opposite sex and begging my husband (who was a woman) to buy me nice clothes and accessories. There were so many moving pieces on tabletop simulator which made it difficult to keep things organized. The gameplay itself was a little choppy due to server lag which could have been fixed by in person gameplay.

Leaders here, I figured were the women. They were the ones who picked what they wanted and tried to match themselves against other women to ensure they looked better at the ball. However, it was up to the men to acquire enough money to satisfy their lady so leadership shifted around the table at various points in the game.

When it came down to the ball, we couldn’t decide who looked better, so we concluded the game with a draw. That way everybody could feel somewhat accomplished in that they did a good job playing the game. I would need to read over the rules a bit more to ensure a better understanding and a better experience playing this game again. It wasn’t a bad game, it just wasn’t my favorite.

D&D (Weeks 1-3)

I had heard so much about this game through the years and never had a chance to play it until this class. It was great experience overall. There was so much free rein over what to do and where to go. I love the aspect of the medieval setting. When building my character, I tried giving myself traits that corresponded with who I am in real life. I focused on giving myself extra benefits in the elements of stealth and persuasion. These traits proved to serve useful when playing the game. At one point when crew was settling down in a town for a short rest, I went to a blacksmith shop and persuaded the shopkeeper to sell me weapons at a discounted price. And in battle, my extra stealth points gave me and my team an advantage when engaging targets that were unaware of our presence. At one point, our whole team almost got eliminated by goblins if it weren’t for healing potions that one member provided.

Our leaders here were, of course, our dungeon master Griff, who did a fantastic job of conducting the game and answering questions when needed, and Joe, a member of our team who had already played D&D prior to this session. Joe would command the squad and instruct us on what to do. Both Joe and Griff made the game much easier for the myself and the others who had never played before.

Despite us never reaching our goal in the game because we ran out of class time, this experience was loads of fun for me. It was something new and I really admire the free will aspect and the hundreds of different paths to take to accomplish a goal.

Free Play (Week 1)

For our first week of free play, I ended up playing Can’t Stop again with one other classmate, Boran. We had a 1v1 duel marathon of Can’t Stop. It got very competitive at times and we both enjoyed playing. It was a close race for the first half hour, but I ended winning 4 or 5 games in row after that to give myself quite the lead over my opponent. I think I may have just gotten really lucky since both Boran and I were utilizing similar strategy of trying to be the first to take the middle lanes of 6,7 and 8. Nonetheless, it was competitive throughout and we ended up cranking out games in like 4-8 minutes spans. It was a complete rapid fire pace of play since it was just the two of us.

I kind of saw myself as a leader in this game because I had already won so many games in the previous session of Can’t Stop. I felt like I knew exactly what i was doing entering the game. I also tried giving Boran advice when he went for risky plays with numbers like 2, 3, 11, and 12. Whether or not he listened to me was a different story. He may have gotten super lucky and beat me that way, or completely threw the game for himself.

Cant Stop/ Incan Gold

This was one of my favorite weeks of class. I’m fascinated by games based off chance and probability and games like Can’t Stop gave me inspiration to construct a game of chance for my final game presentation. I had never played this game before so I was determined to use my knowledge of probability and statistics to give myself a competitive edge over the other players. I ended winning a good majority of the games in fact. I quickly discovered that having the numbers 6,7, and 8 was the most powerful way of advancing up the board, since they are the most common roll combinations when throwing two dice.

This game was actually very simple to run virtually and honestly probably quicker than in person because the game would tell you automatically which lanes you could and couldn’t move up in as opposed to calculating that yourself. This game was fun and everyone in my group enjoyed it. Everyone was laughing and even routing for others when someone would go on a 10+ roll streak. The pace of play was rapid fire and we got multiple games in within our class session which I think is perk to the game. Unfortunately, we could not run Incan Gold over Tabletopia, so my group ended up playing Can’t Stop for the whole session. We had a lot of fun playing this game and I think this is one that I will show to my poker buddies back at home, since they also enjoy games that are probability based.

Fiasco (Week 2)

During the second week of Fiasco, we began with the Tilt and the most chaotic part of the game. The storyline took a turn and I was no longer the central antagonist to the plot. It was fun to see what other players came up with to mitigate the story and make things more interesting. We finally hit the conclusion and wrapped up the game where everyone’s fate besides one player was ugly and unfavorable.

Overall, the game played out well over the two weeks, however there were many downsides. Being online for this game made it difficult to keep scenes flowing and interesting. There were numerous times where the zoom call went silent and no one could find the initiative to continue the story. I think if we were in person it would be a lot easier to avoid this issue.

Fiasco contains many elements that tie to leadership. For one, a person who is constantly active in the role playing aspect and keeps the story going, I think is considered a leader in this game. This person for us was Julia. She was always enthusiastic and pushed me and the other players on the path of developing abstract stories. Not only this, but Julia also delegated leadership onto others, via the storytelling. If someone’s character ended up to be more important to the story, they could then see themselves at the new leader of game. It was interesting how roles changed drastically throughout the game.

Fiasco (Week 1)

The first week of Fiasco was interesting to say the least. I love the idea of a game that isn’t centered around winning, rather relying the creativity of the players to build a crazy story. It took me back to my days when I used to do theatre in high school. The game requires a lot of improvisation and cooperation to create a wicked storyline that you’d only find in a fiction book or movie.

Though I’m still having fun, this game would play out much better if we were all in person seated around a table. It’s a bit harder to feed off each-other and have fluid scene when conducting it online, but again, what are ya gonna do. It is what it is. I’m looking forward to the second part of Fiasco where we really get to dive deeper into our characters and build up to the story’s climax. It’s a lot of fun and I definitely think I’m going to show this game to some of my peers back at home.

Roll Player

I’m very excited to be in this class because I’ve always loved playing board games and card games ever since I was a kid. In fact I still get together with friends during breaks to play games like Monopoly, Risk, and Clue. After seeing our professor’s one of many game shelves in his house and looking through Tabletopia for the first time, I realized I don’t know as many games as I thought.

The first class was around the game Roll Player, a game in which I had never even heard of. I had also never played a role playing game before (Clue is the closest game I could imagine). The game was surprisingly very interesting. I didn’t understand all the rules, but I can see how the element of strategy plays a huge role in winning. There’s a lot you can do to build and embody your character to carry him or her to victory.

I know that in-person classes would make the flow of these games much easier. However, I think I am starting to understand how Tabletopia works. It’s fairly user-friendly but gameplay is still at a snails pace. I’m glad I was able to communicate with my classmates to ask questions whenever I was stuck or didn’t know what to do. I’m looking forward to what other games the class has to offer, but as far as the first week, I think overall it was a success (despite the virtual circumstances we are under).