Tag Archives: Leadership

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

This week we played two games, Incan Gold and Can’t Stop. My group used Board Game Arena to play the games. This software was the easiest by far in this class to play the games. When we were on our third or fourth game of Incan Gold, some of the other groups were just finishing setting up the games. Both of these games involve taking risks. We first started the session by playing Incan Gold and then switched to Can’t Stop. My group seemed to have the most fun playing Can’t Stop. Our final round of Can’t Stop was amazing! One of our players was able to win the game in one round without anyone else playing a single coin. We were all rooting for him to complete that and win the game. He used a very risky choice when he chose the 9 column for one of his choices. In the end it played out, and I was so happy for him. 

I honestly can think of anything that was hard for the games. The games were very easy to understand and play. Board game Arena was by far easier to use then TableTop Simulator. There were times where group members had to wait a bit to get into the game due to Board Game Arena giving everyone a bunch of achievements for playing games, but we were still able to play a bunch more rounds than other groups. 

Both Incan Gold and Can’t Stop are risk taking games. In leadership, you have to take risks at times. However, you also have to realize that your idea of risks may not be what your group wants or needs. You have to be understanding of your risk and make sure the benefits of said risk overcome what the disadvantages could be. If you take too many risky decisions with no benefits, you have failed yourself as a leader. Being a leader requires you to be able to make hard decisions that may require some form of risk. 

When learning how to play the games for this week, I played them with my boyfriend. He loved playing Can’t Stop. We would play so many rounds because he loved it so much. He is a lot more of a risk taker than me and always went for the 2s and 12s. I would recommend both Ican Gold and Can’t Stop to all of my friends.

Game of the Week Blog Reflection: Fiasco Week 3

This week was the final week we played Fiasco. During this session we were able to set up the tilt and complete the story. I was surprised to find my character coming out the best. Everyone else went to jail or worse due to my characters actions. My character was able to get away with murder but that doesn’t mean she didn’t feel guity about it. The murder was pinned onto two other characters in the session, causing them to pay my characters price for her crime. My character ended up regretting everything that she did to the others, and even did try to turn herself in. However, due to the police in our session being corrupt, they didn’t believe her and chose to continue on with what they believed as correct.

I think the hardest part of this week was setting up the tilt. At first, my group didn’t know where to go with the tilt. We also had to refresh the rules on how the tilt was played out, due to how long it had been since we all watched the how-to videos. There was a lot of time we spent on trying to decide where we wanted the story to proceed. 

The game Fiasco is a cooperation game, but you are also trying to compete with the others. We all are writing a story and acting out what our characters would do. We all need to be able to give and take to move the story and the game along. Everyone has a role to be played. It takes leadership to direct the story. You have to either direct the story in the direction you want it to be, or follow someone else’s ideas in the story. Everyone has a give and take in this game. However, everyone is still trying to make it so that their character’s goals are achieved. In our session, everyone could state that they lost the game, but how much everyone lost was different. 

I still believe that my friends who are into Dungeons and Dragons would enjoy playing Fiasco. They all enjoy making characters and acting as their characters. They also all have chaotic tendencies. Maybe the next time we all start planning a new Dungeons and Dragons campaign, I could instead suggest we all play Fiasco.  

Fiasco: A Review

Over the past three weeks, we played a roleplaying game called Fiasco. Overall, I really enjoyed Fiasco because of the openness of the game proper. Everyone gets their time in the spotlight because of how the game is structured. This can be an issue in some TTRPGs that rely heavily on roleplaying.

Session one consisted of selecting the wild west playset, Boomtown, character creation, and Act One. We rolled all the dice in the center of the board and then went round-robin, choosing how our characters’ relationships. This was the hardest part to understand for me. Your character traits, relationships, and everything else are pulled from the communal pool of dice. For players new to roleplaying systems, I think this works really well at giving them a place to start, however I would have liked to have more agency over the choices I made as I could see much more interesting plot threads that what we got. However, the game we played was a total blast, as you will soon see.

I ended up playing Lonnie, the horse whisperer whose most prized possession was the tear-stained love letter left by his husband, Dino (A player in the game), who had up and disappeared in the middle of the night. Character creation is one thing that Fiasco does right. Conflict of interest is one of the main focuses of the game, and by working together to establish motives, the plot of the game became clear. Lonnie goes to his outlaw cousin Annie, another PC, with a half-baked plan to kill his husband in a fit of rage. As the session progresses, it becomes clear that Annie has her own agenda. She robbed Dino way in the past for a whopping $20,000 and maybe planning to finish him off once and for all. Annie meets up with her old partner in crime Samira, another PC, to pick up some firearms, and the spark of an old romance ignites. As it turns out, Samira works for Dino at his general store next to the old church. At the end of session one, we were primed and ready to go for the tilt.

Session two was where **** hit the fan. Lonnie and Annie were determined to off Dino. Meanwhile Samira in crime was hatching her own plan so that she and Annie could ride into the sunset while everything burned around them. Dino, now played by a new member to the group, tried to reconsile with Lonnie at the church where they first came together as a couple. Then Annie arrived and tried to convince Lonnie to pull the trigger and off the man who caused him so much pain, but Dino had succeeded in planting a seed of doubt in Lonnie’s mind Our tilt was someone panic and panic, Lonnie did. Seeing this moment of doubt, Annie shoots Lonnie in the leg and gets into a scuffle with Dino. Samira arrives and tends to Lonnie’s would while thinking about stabbing him. The fight continues until Samira suggests that Annie and her just leave Lonnie and Dino. Annie agrees yet she sets the church on fire on her way out. The session ends on a cliff hanger with The Aftermath saved for meeting three.

Session three was a rather short one for us as all we had to do was cover The Aftermath. Throughtout the game when each seen ends, the PCs where not involved get to decide if the characters involved got good or bad endings. Now is when you total up the die to determine your ending. Lonnie got a bitter end where he lived through the encounter with his cousin however the wound never quite healed right. Lonnie blamed everyone but himself and this sour attitude caused Dino to leave him again. The game ended as it began, with Lonnie reading a tear stained love letter.

Fiasco works to facilitate leadership in numerous ways, chief among them being: knowing when to step down and let someone else have the spot light. Fiasco heavily relies on improvisation and the best improv scenes work best when everyone is complementing each other and building on what everyone else establishes. In our game each person had several opportunities to lead a scene in the direction they wanted it to go and we supported them in that moment.

Game of the Week Blog Reflection: Fiasco Week 1 Game of the Week Blog Reflection: Fiasco Week 1

For this week in class, we started playing the game Fiasco. We are going to be playing this game over a span of three weeks. For the first week, my group was only able to set up the game. In the set up we had to roll dice to create our world and characters. As we progressed through the dice we realized our choices were becoming limited and made it harder for us to decide where we wanted our story to progress. In the end several characters had the same needs as we rolled a large proportion of one dice number. Our set up took longer than most. It took a bit of time to get everyone one the game page to get our story running. 

Fiasco is a game about co-leadership. You can’t play this game quietly or by yourself. Each person has to put something to the table in order for your story to work. Collaboration is the key to making this game succeed. If only one person is talking, asking the questions, and giving ideas for how the story could progress, then the game is not being played. Everyone has to put an effort into creating the world this game lives in.

I think my friends Sarah, Laura, Sam, and Gavin would enjoy playing this game. All of them enjoy playing games like DnD. At times the sessions of DnD they play almost end up in a Fiasco type journey. They love building worlds that could end up going horribly wrong based on the players actions. It as if chaos runs in their veins during the game session.

Game of the Week Blog Reflection: Roll Player

This week we played the game Roll Player. This game takes a whole new meaning into the ideas of character creation. I’ve never played a game before where the entire game is making a character. After a few technical difficulties, my group was able to play the game. I really enjoyed having to play a game all about character creation. Throughout the entire game, I was developing my strategy in making my character. However, due to time restraints we were unable to complete the game and determine scores. Despite not finishing the game in the class session, I had a blast playing. I’m thinking of buying and adding this game into my board game collection.

The hardest part of this game was the amount of things and rules to remember. My group forgot that we had additional skills that we could use when doing a specific part of the game. I might have had an easier skill to remember than my group mates as I was able to hold more weapons than the others. There were just so many things that you had to keep track of that it could get overwhelming at times.

Roll Player ties to leadership into the juggling of all the things you had to do. To be a leader, you might and probably will have to look at several things at one time. I remember hearing that being a good leader involves juggling balls, however your job as a leader is to know which balls are plastic and which are glass. If you drop a glass ball it shatters and is unable to be as it once was. If you drop a plastic ball, it will just bounce off the ground. Sometimes you gotta drop a few plastic balls to preserve the glass balls. 

I think my friends Gavin, Nick and Laura would enjoy this game. We play board games from time to time and always show each other new games. We haven’t been playing lately due to social distancing, but with the help of Tabletopia we could possibly play. Gavin and I actually got to play a game of it together and were having a blast trying to strategise to make our character have the best stats. 

BuzzFeed Quiz: Don’t Starve and Leadership

           I decided to create a BuzzFeed quiz based off of characters from the game Don’t Starve. I decided to choose this because each character from Don’t Starve has a unique personality with quirks, perks and drawbacks. I started with the original 9 characters and gave an overview of each character in the results as well as what that might say about the quiz taker’s own personality. Each character’s backstory and personality are over the top stereotypes so giving basic traits to the quiz taker based on the character is more likely to be resonated with. After that I imagined what each character from don’t starve would be like if they were a leader, how would they treat their followers and what would people go to them for and added that to each result as well.

            I asked my friends to take this quiz and tell me their result. Then I asked them if they believed it accurately depicted them or not and why. Most of my friends believed it to be mostly accurate to them but some were just a little too off.

            The first one to take the test was Nick. He got the result Wendy. Wendy is a sweet girl whose sister haunts her. I had her answers be mostly related to family, love, and care. Nick told me that he does like to be alone in his head or outside somewhere. He believes he is a caring leader and loves to listen to other’s stories and problems. The only inaccurate thing was that he didn’t have that strong of a connection with his mom.

            The second one to take the test was Jeremy. He got the result WX-78. WX-78 is a self-sustaining robot who constantly improves himself and hates humans. I geared his answers towards logical thinking and being alone without any desires or emotions. Jeremy believed this is really close to accurate for him in the sense that he doesn’t like rainy days, generally doesn’t like people, loves his pets, and is a logical thinker. The only inaccurate thing was that he is an emotional person, not a heartless robot.

            The third person to take the test was Connor. He got the result Wes. Wes is a silent French mime who expresses his emotions through physical motions and painting. I made his answers fall towards indecision, quietness, and wanting to have only close friends. Connor believed this result was accurate to him because he can lead a group of friends and express with art. He had no complaints with his result.

            The fourth person to take the test was Daniel. He got the result Maxwell. Maxwell is the antagonist of the game and is entertained by watching the other players struggle to survive. However, he crawled his way to the top after being at an all time low and decided to focus his answers on competition, winning, and himself. Daniel thought this was kind of accurate in the sense that he is competitive, but he loves people, doesn’t see them as subjects, and tends to have good relationships.

            The fifth person to take the test was Riley. He got the result Wolfgang. Wolfgang is a strong character who can take on the toughest foes and has a high self-esteem. I aimed his answers at strength, confidence, and attention. Riley thought this result was accurate for him except he hoped he didn’t come across as boastful.

            The sixth person to take the test was Zach. He got the result Wilson. Wilson is a witty, creative scientist who isn’t that good at being a scientist. I geared his answers toward creativity, ideas, and not being good enough. Zach did not think this result was accurate at all. He is extroverted, hates the winter, is afraid of the unknown, and says that no one goes to him for creative input. The only thing that this result kind of got right was that he means well even if nothing goes to plan. Zach then decided to take the quiz a second time and he got the result Wes, like Connor. He once again did not think the result accurately portrayed him because he is not silent and doesn’t communicate with art.

            The seventh person to take the test was Maggie. She got Maxwell as her result, like Daniel. She was sad that the result said she would rather be feared than loved.

            The eighth person to take the test was Rebecca. She also got Maxwell. She said that it was accurate because she liked control and to be respected but that it was inaccurate because she appreciates input from others and doesn’t make gut decisions.

            The ninth person to take the test was Julia. She got Wendy like Nick. She said she’d like to think it fits but she said that she does need to work on her active listening skills more for it to fit perfectly.

            The tenth person to take the test was Mackenzie. The got Wolfgang like Riley. She said it was accurate because she is confident, opinionated and likes to command a room. She also says she prioritized health, but she doesn’t center her life around it. She only thinks its inaccurate because she doesn’t see herself as a leader and people don’t look to her for instruction.

           The eleventh person to take the test was Ethan. He got Woodie. Woodie is a polite Canadian lumberjack stereotype who also turns into a werebeaver. I centered his answers around hard work, the outdoors, and being polite to people. Ethan believed this was fitting because he is down to Earth, people respect him and his values, and he also definitely turns into a werebeaver.

            So overall, I think my test was accurate with some exceptions. Tests that categorize people can’t all be winners because humans are too complex to begin with to be put into 1 of 9 characters from a video game.

Take the test for yourself here:
https://www.buzzfeed.com/jackowcl/what-dont-starve-character-are-you-and-what-does-8yay0v5dcx