Tag Archives: GOTW

Game of the Week Blog Reflection (For Class on 2/17/2022): Fiasco Week 1

Not long ago, our class got together to play sessions of the Fiasco Role Playing Game over a course of two weeks. Fiasco is an RPG System designed with the intent of creating chaos and allowing players to create the most disastrous situations they can. In this game, players use the color coded dice they have been given to help create their characters and determine the outcomes of scenes that they perform, all so that they can work together to create an interesting story where everything falls apart around their characters. It is worth noting that these dice rolls do not determine what the characters will be, but rather aspects of the character, such as their relationships with other characters (each player is actually required to establish at least one relationship with another character), what their goals are, and perhaps even key aspects of the world that all of the players can interact with, like important objects and locations. The players can then use all of these aspects to act out two scenes each in Act 1, developing their characters and creating conflict between their characters. Players can either establish a scene and act it out themselves, waiting for another player to give them either a positive or negative die to determine how it ends, or choose a positive or negative outcome and allow the other players to establish a scene for them to finish. For my personal group, this was the extent of our first session of Fiasco, as we ran out of time just as we finished our Act 1. 

As for our session itself, once we had established our characters and our setting, a commercial district in the middle of a suburban town, it was time for us to start acting out our scenes. Personally, I believe that this was the most difficult part of the game for our group, at least initially. With nothing to go off of besides our characters goals and relationships. With that in mind, I tried my best to establish our first scene based upon my character, Eddy McFarlain, and his rival’s (another player) competing lemonade stands, and tried to use that pre-established conflict to help begin our story. As we continued to create scenes and get a feel for our characters, this process became much easier, leading to scenes where two estranged relatives fight with each other as passive aggressively as they possibly could, and a rival lemonade stand employs a “wizard” to sabotage their competition by graffitiing their cart. However, the initial starting point was very noticeably slower to start than any other scene that followed it. 

While the beginning of our session may have been the most difficult part of our session, I believe that this also shows just how Fiasco might relate to leadership as a whole. In our game of Fiasco, we had difficulty beginning our scenes because we weren’t sure where our story was going at that point. Personally, I believe that this could represent the vision that a leader needs of their goal in order to successfully lead their team. If the leader is unsure of what their own goals are, they will likely have a very hard time actually guiding their team towards a common goal. During the course of their project, the goal might become clearer, and therefore easier for the leader to guide their team toward. However, it would be preferable for the leader to know exactly what their goal is from the beginning, so that the “warm up” period could be skipped entirely. 

However, an insight into leadership is not the only important note that I believe I can take from this, as it may also contain an insight into myself. First though, I need to more completely describe the character that I was playing as in this session, Edward “Eddy” McFarlain. Eddy is an aspiring lemonade salesman that has been down on his luck recently, as his rival across the street has managed to do far more business than him. His goals, based upon the result of the earlier rolls, were to Get Rich using a living will, and to vaguely Get Even. He also has a The Past, fast friends relationship with one of the other characters, and a Work, business rivals relationship with another (his lemonade stand rival). However, despite all of these opportunities to create conflict himself, perhaps by instigating his rival or using his friend in some way, I ended up playing Eddy as a fairly honorable, if failing, businessman, and someone that tries to be a good friend. I personally think that this aspect reflects the most on me, as I try my best to be a helpful, caring friend, and to help out whenever I’m able. In this way, I believe that my own personal values ended up being visible in Eddy, as a character that tried to avoid dirty tactics in a system that is expressly designed for them.

A Frightening, Flammable Fiasco in the Far West (Act 2)

This week, we finished up our playthroughs of Fiasco! Picking up right where we left off after the Tilt, players ran through Act 2 and the Aftermath of their games. In the case of my group, we finally reached that climactic bank heist that had been built up all of Act 1 and concluded with a gun fight in the wild west, many dead, and everybody suffering just a little. It was a great time. Somehow, my character had the happiest ending because he took a bullet to the gut early on and managed to avoid the deadly final shootout that left all but one other player dead. Unfortunately, that other player was the infamous bounty hunter my character swore revenge on many years prior, so it wasn’t a “happy” ending.

The hardest part of Act 2 for me was accepting failure. The goal of the game is, of course, to come up with schemes that fail spectacularly. However, in the moment while playing the game, everyone is trying to achieve some degree of success and can bring the game slightly to a halt. A few examples from my game come to mind, but I’ll only talk about one. One player, whose character was in the spotlight, was trying to convinced another player’s character to come outside and follow him to the bank. He’d received a white die, signaling a positive outcome, but the scene ended with the second character fleeing out the back window and getting away. It stuck out to me as a case of going against the outcome die for the first player because the second player did not want to fail. Improvising involves a rule-of-thumb dubbed “yes, and…”, where people accept what is being done and continue with what has been set up. Playing Fiasco, it was really hard to say, “Yes, I will fail, and this is how it happens.”

One tie to leadership that Fiasco demonstrates well is encouraging healthy competition. Fiasco involves so much betrayal and player-against-player storytelling, but at the end of the day, it is a roleplaying game and everyone is there to have fun. I think it does really well encouraging people to go ahead with their plans, not take what others do too personally, and having an overall fun time regardless of what happens. Applying this to the real world, minor competition within a group can be beneficial because it pushes everyone involved to do better in their endeavors. As a leader, it is important to make sure, despite any rivalries, that everyone on all sides knows it is in good fun.

Having played through the second half of Fiasco, I would like to slightly adjust that kinds of people I previously said would enjoy the game. People who are comfortable improvising or don’t mind giving improv a try would enjoy playing the game. In addition to that, anybody who plays games to win and takes experiences that happen in games personally should steer away from Fiasco. Furthermore, anybody who would *make* a playthrough of Fiasco personal for other players should stay away. For those reasons, I can see Fiasco being enjoyed by groups of friends who are fine with giving each other grief and don’t mind being ridiculous with each other.

Game of the Week Blog Reflection (For Class on 2/10/2022): Mysterium

    Recently, our class got together to play Mysterium, a cooperative social-deduction game where the players take on one of two different roles, with one player as the “Ghost” and the one to six other players as the Psychic Investigators. At its core, Mysterium is a game all about communication, as the Ghost attempts to inform the Investigators who the suspects of their murder are and which suspect killed them, without being able to speak. Instead, the Ghost must use the intricate artwork on the dream cards they draw to try and hint to the Investigators which specific suspect, location and weapon that they are trying to find. It is this particular aspect that, as the Ghost, I found the most difficult. There were many times where I felt as if the dreams I had drawn simply did not fit with any of the items I was trying to help the Investigators find, but I still needed to give them something. At other times though, I thought that I had found the perfect card to give to an Investigator, something that would point them directly to the object I wanted them to guess, but they would then notice all of the details in the picture that I had ignored. In both of these situations, the Investigators were ultimately led away from the suspect, location or weapon that I was trying to indicate.

    The session as a whole was very much like this example, as while we did have some successes as a group, there were still many players by the end of the game who were unable to complete their set. I still personally attribute this loss to my general lack of experience with the game and my poor use of the dreams I was given, as there were many dreams that I handed out that simply led the Investigators more astray, or that failed to communicate what I intended. Of course, not all dreams led to failures, as some of the Investigators were able to complete their set within the given number of rounds. There was even one particular round where I found a dream that was perfect for a particular location, allowing that Investigator to guess their location with only one dream. However, for every large success, my session featured a similarly large failure, as one suspect took a very large number of dreams for their Investigator to find them. 

    However, while our session may have ended in a loss, I still feel that we could draw some interesting parallels between Mysterium and leadership as a result of it. While communication was easily the most difficult part of this game, I also feel that it is the part that this game shares the most in common with leadership, as having good communication with your team is very important for successful leaders. If a leader is unable to communicate exactly what their vision is with their teammates, there could be a large amount of confusion in what exactly the leader is asking their team to do, or what their goal even is. Similarly, if the Ghost in Mysterium is unable to use their dreams to effectively communicate with the Investigators, the Investigators will have no idea what the Ghost is actually trying to indicate to them, and will be forced to simply go off of their best guess of what the Ghost intended rather than the actual answer.

    Overall, despite our session ending in failure, I did enjoy my time with Mysterium. Being forced to turn strange, abstract artwork into a clue with a very specific meaning is a very interesting and fun concept, and I imagine with practice I might be able to better communicate with my Investigators just what my dreams are supposed to indicate. I would also be interested in playing the game again, but as an Investigator instead, so I can see how I do at the game when I’m trying to interpret the dreams handed to me rather than handing out the dreams myself. Not only that, but the experience of playing Mysterium has also helped me to understand just how important it is to have strong communication as a leader.

The Murder Mystery at Mysterium Manor

I love cooperative games. Even within the genre “cooperative”, there is so much variety in games. There may be players working in a team against other players as in Codenames or all of the players working together against the game itself as in Pandemic. However, as is the case for this Game of the Week, there is no enemy or clear adversary. In Mysterium, the challenge lies in communication — or lack thereof. One player acts as the Ghost, trying to get a team of Psychics to correctly deduce combinations of suspects, locations, and weapons to solve their murder. The challenge? The Ghost can make no sounds, give no facial expressions nor gestures, and must only communicate to the Psychics using a limited supply of cards beautifully illustrated with abstract images. It is up to the Psychics to figure out what messages the Ghost is trying to convey with these cards to solve the crime.

During class, I played the role of the Ghost, and I can say with confidence that having such limited communication with your teammates makes it really difficult to win Mysterium. That is also illustrated by the fact that there was a 0% win rate in class among the 3 groups. The Psychics are dependent on the Ghost giving them clues about the sets of suspects-locations-weapons, but the art on those clue cards are so colorful and detailed! Having to match the 7 clues in my hand to the 5 cards that the 5 Psychics had to guess while also paying attention to the other 6 cards I had the steer the Psychics away from… Creating a connection between the clues and the cards was hard enough. Knowing the Psychics had to figure out what my thought processes were for each clue made me squirm in my seat and hide behind my screen for fear of giving away too much information with my reactions. I think the hardest part of the game for me was biting my tongue while listening to the Psychics discuss what their answers should be. I wanted desperately to praise the players who understood my line of thinking, warn the players who got attached to the wrong details, and hint to one side of the table to look at the clues I’d given out to the other side.

When thinking about this game in terms of leadership, my mind keeps coming back to all of the things I couldn’t do as the Ghost. I couldn’t encourage my players for doing a good job. I couldn’t explain my thinking with misinterpreted clues. I remember watching in horror as one of my players guessed literally every other suspect than the one I wanted him to pick because I couldn’t say, “Let’s forget that last clue I gave you because I definitely gave you the wrong idea with it.” Playing a game with no communication really goes to show how important communication is for succeeding. Being able to clear up confusion verbally would have made the game trivial, yes, but applying this game to the real world, open discussion and being able to clear up previous mistakes is so very, very important.

I think Mysterium is a fantastic game. I recommend, however, to play it with family or a group of close friends first. Anybody who loves a game of Charades, loves beautiful art and aesthetics, and doesn’t mind waiting patiently for the Ghost to set-up or disperse clues would love this game. I suggest to play with a group of people you know very well first as an “easy mode” introduction to the game. You’ll know the thought processes of family and friends, and can get a handle on the rules of the game. Then, give it a try with strangers or acquaintances for an added challenge.

Game of the Week Blog Reflection (For Class on 1/27/2022): Ultimate Werewolf

This past week, our class got together to play a session of Ultimate Werewolf, a hidden role game where the players are divided into two teams, the Villagers and the Werewolves. However, as it is a hidden role game, none of these allegiances or roles are known from the beginning of the game, and this plays into what I personally believe was the most difficult part of the game, the beginning. Since no one had been eliminated yet, and no one’s role had been revealed, we had no information to go off of before eliminating our first player. As such, the discussions in the game’s early rounds often took very long to start, and had very little direction. However, as the game progressed and more information was revealed, discussions became easier to start and had a clearer direction to go off of. 

As for the session as a whole, I was given the role of the Seer at the beginning of the game, a role that is very powerful as they can determine which players are villagers and which are werewolves. As such, it was very concerning to me for the Villager team when the Werewolves managed to eliminate me in one of the earlier nights. My concern only grew as the game progressed, and the Apprentice Seer revealed themselves in an attempt to gain trust, an attempt that was then turned around entirely by the Sorceress pretending to be the Seer. After that point, things appeared very bleak for the villagers as they continued to lose more of their ranks, even if they had eliminated the Sorceress, until toward the end of the game when the Wolf Cub and one of the Werewolves had been eliminated. During the final round, the Hunter was chosen as the person the village was going to kill, and as their final act they chose one the last remaining Werewolf as the person they wanted to take out with them, which allowed the villagers to win the game! Overall, while I certainly did not enjoy being eliminated as early as I was, the game as a whole was entertaining, and it was interesting to see what conclusions people came to as the game progressed.

However, just what ties does Ultimate Werewolf have to leadership? I think that the ties here can be seen in just how discussions functioned, as the discussions tended to have one person in particular who “led” them, and this leader changed each round. This leader may have simply been the first person to speak up, it may have been the person who discussed possible strategies the villagers could use, or it may have been the player that had the most compelling reason for eliminating someone. No matter the situation that led to them becoming the leader though, doing so appeared to come with some risk, as they were often targeted by other villagers or by the Werewolves. Not only that, but choosing someone to eliminate is a risk itself, as eliminating the wrong person will shift the target that you placed on them over to yourself instead. I feel that this is an interesting parallel to leadership in the real world, as part of being a good leader involves taking risks, as only with those risks do you get closer to your goal. However, if those risks are not managed well, they may cause more harm than good.

Alongside this idea of risks and leadership though, I would also like to discuss my own play style for this game, or at the very least my plans for it as I was unfortunately eliminated rather early on. I was not planning on taking many risks unless I could be certain that they would lead to a positive outcome for the team. This was partly because of my role as the Seer, a role that I felt was very powerful since it could identify Werewolves with no doubts. As such, I did not want to draw too much attention to myself during the discussions unless I knew whether a target that was being discussed was a Villager or a Werewolf, and would then attempt to draw the discussion away from that person or toward them while trying not to draw too much attention to myself. Though, while I did not want to draw too much attention to myself as the Seer, this is actually quite similar to my usual level of risk taking. I am usually quite worried about taking a risk unless I am certain that the potential rewards are worth it. 

Overall, I certainly did enjoy our session of Ultimate Werewolf despite being eliminated rather early on, as even watching Social Deduction games like this can be quite fun. Not only was it fun though, it also revealed just inseparable risk-taking and leadership are, as being a leader both involves making risky decisions and drawing attention to yourself as a result.

Game of the Week: Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

I know what you’re thinking. “Legend of Zelda is not a tabletop board game so why did you play it for tabletop leadership’s free play week?” Well, I’m sure everyone knows the craziness that has been happening recently. Classes at Miami University have been moved to online along with everyone else’s lives. This makes it quite difficult for a tabletop board game class to function. We have to improvise. Luckily, last week was free play week and this week is spring break so we have time to adapt to our new online home environments.

Many of you might have grown up with Legend of Zelda games and know all the history behind the lore and have figured out which order the games stories align in. Breath of the Wild is actually my first Legend of Zelda game. I grew up playing Battle for Bikini Bottom, Star Wars Battlefront, and Lego Indiana Jones, not the pure classics. (Though I beg to differ that Battle for Bikini Bottom is a classic in its own way). What I know about Breath of the Wild is that it is unlike any other Legend of Zelda game because it is open world. I may be wrong about that, but bear with me. I had previously played this game at my friends house a little after it first came out but I haven’t touched it again until now when I bought it for myself. It is an absolutely beautiful game with an environment that tells a story which I absolutely love. I would almost prefer to never run into the old man to hear the story about the city’s ruin and to figure it out myself. There is a main over arching quest and then several mini quests you can go on, but you can also just completely explore the landscape for yourself.

I think the hardest part about this game is the travel. Your stamina isn’t that much help starting off and it takes a while to get the paraglider and even that needs stamina and a large mountain to jump off to work. You can use horses but if you are going through a forest or up a mountain, the horse stops and is difficult to maneuver. To combat this I’ve been trying to conquer every tower to take advantage of teleporting, but getting to the towers are a nightmare when they are surrounded by enemies I am not ready to fight. Enemies are also quite difficult in this game because it is open world. I don’t know which enemies I am ready to fight and which I should avoid all together until I can come back stronger with more hearts, stamina, and better weapons which would most likely break before I can finish the enemy off.

This is a single player game so it is hard to see the leadership value in this game, but I believe it is there. You are the hero this land deserves, but you are not above anyone. You need to buy your supplies, food, and hotel stays like everyone else and if you can’t, you have to go fight or find it yourself. No one is doing you any favors, in fact you are the one fulfilling favors. As a leader, you shouldn’t expect anything from others and you should be the one helping your followers. You are guiding them toward lighter days and you should be prepared to carry the burdens. When you are working in a team, you do not single out the person who made a mistake, you bear the responsibility because you were the one who did not lead them correctly. In Legend of Zelda, you will pick up the mistakes from 100 years ago and save Zelda from Ganon.

I think my friend Gen would love this game. She is super into Pokemon and loves the new game which is also kind of open world. She would appreciate the story and the graphics as much as I do. She would enjoy the somewhat relaxing atmosphere until she kicks it into high gear to fight something. She would be amazing at this game.

Game of the Week: Survive! Escape from Atlantis

Yesterday in Tabletop games and Leadership, we played Survive! Escape from Atlantis. We had the complete expansion set, but opted out of using the Octopus expansion. This game was interesting. It was a game different than anything I played before. This game is in the combat game genre and the only other specifically combat game I played before was King of Tokyo, but it had extremely different game mechanics.

For Survivie! Escape from Atlantis, you were given several meeple with several different values from 1-6. They are placed on the mixed tiles in the middle of the board representing Atlantis and you must board a boat and sail safely to the corners of the board to land. There are sea monsters that can move and destroy your boat and kill your meeple. Other players have the opportunity to control these monsters and target you. The end of the game is decided by a volcano tile and you count the values of the meeple you saved.

The hard part about this game is the helplessness I felt while playing. There were so many opportunities for players to kill your people before it was your turn again and sometimes they weren’t even the cause. I lost both games while playing in class and I lost by a giant margin compared to everyone else. I was told this game doesn’t cause much anger when meeple are killed, but when I lost all my meeple except 1 in the second game, I couldn’t help but feel a bit upset. It was so hard to avoid death for me or even get my meeple off the island. At the end though, I feel like I have to narrow it down to the luck of the tiles I chose to put my meeple on and the tiles I chose to sink.

Leadership in the game I believe is in the cooperation you must do in this game despite it being a combat game where it is player versus player. When a player boards your boat you must make a pact to work together to get out alive. When a player has the opportunity to kill your meeple, you must convince them why they should not. Leadership cannot work without cooperation and teamwork even when you don’t want to work with the others on your team. I’ve learned from a different class about the difference between teams and groups. Groups split up the work and never discuss together and at the end, the project is a thrown together Frankenstein of several different approaches to the problem. Teams constantly meet and there is a leader who brings people together to work on the problem and create a seamless product. Teams are the better option and this game shows that you cannot win without a little bit of teamwork with others you are competing with.

Even though I already know he loves this game, I would have definitely recommended this game to my friend Jeremy. He was the one who showed me the game King of Tokyo and always wants to compete in games. He has expressed how much he hates cooperation in games and wants to do everything himself. I also saw this when playing Bohnanza with him. He barely traded at all and ended up losing. He did not want to help others even when it was hurting him. He would love to kill meeple in Survive and quickly escape by himself.

I would love to try this game again and hope for better luck.

Game of the Week: Mysterium

Last week I got the chance to play the game Mysterium in Tabletop Games and Leadership. Several times since coming to college I heard of this game and how I should play it because of my obsession with Betrayal at the House on the Hill and Clue. As much as Clue holds a dear place in my heart from my childhood, this game blew it out of the water. Mysterium contains intrigue, cooperation, and creative thinking.

Mysterium is a game with a team of detectives and a ghost who are all working together to solve the ghost’s murder. The ghost may not speak and will give the detectives dreams to hint towards the person, place and weapon. The detectives discuss their dreams with the other detectives and they try to uncover what it means. Once everyone finds their own stories, the ghost will give a final hint to the players on what is the true story of their demise.

I have not played Mysterium before this class and it was easy to pick up and figure out. However, there is some difficulty in deciding what each dream means. There are usually several unique aspects to each card and it is hard to distinguish which aspect the ghost was aiming for. The advantage a returning team of players have is memories associated with certain cards. Friends who play this game can develop a very specific meaning to a card which any one of them could understand immediately when given this card. As difficult as it is to be a new player to the game, the randomness of the cards and the fact you are working together compensates for this.

The Tabletop games and Leadership course gives you a new perspective on games every week because you start to decide what about the game could tie back to leadership. There are many things in this game that could teach leadership, but one of these is the ghost’s position. The ghost of the game has no say in what the dream they gave meant. They chose based on their own ideas and associations with the card. However, they are able to listen to and view the thought process of the detectives. The ghost must reach an understanding of where everyone’s ideas are at and what they focus on. Through this observation, they can change the entire game’s direction toward everyone’s success. This relates a lot back to leadership because you cannot lead without your followers. Leaders must understand their followers’ needs in order to successfully lead and keep their followers from wandering. I did not play the role of the ghost, but I would love the opportunity to lead the detectives in their mystery.

I love the game Mysterium, but I know of someone else who would also love to play this. My sister-in-law Claire. Claire and my brother, Shane, are major board game nerds and would always invite their friends over to play during college. Claire is intelligent and precise, but her personality is very easy going. She is cooperative because she would always trade with me during our games of Catan and listen to my ideas on how to overthrow my brother from his board game throne. Shane is very competitive and will do whatever it takes to win. I know from growing up with him I would try to avoid being on a team against him. I’m sure Claire would love a game where it is fun and cooperative to avoid my brother’s boasting or sulking at the game’s end.

Overall, this was a fantastic game for week 4 of this course. I can’t wait for week 5!