I'm not much of a player, i'm too much of an introvert and not nearly popular enough to get people over for an afternoon or night. But I do like my games. I think my favorite is probably Codenames, because it's a fun game where you can be witty if you pay attention. I also loved Munchkin, (it's hilarious that you have to cooperate with others in order to keep opponents from winning and cheating isn't cheating if you don't get caught) but I've only played it once and haven't managed to comprehend the rulebook for a 2nd round years later. At parties, we usually just play Cards Against Humanity with our custom deck. I always wanted to try Dead of Winter, because I love the cooperative horror theme. The more something is about deduction, deception and cooperation the better for me. So today I bought Arkham Horror, which is a similar game, just more famous and I'm excited to try it with my beloved. We also bought Root that seems to be just as complicated and awesome. And Who did it? because it seems to be simple enough for two.



So what are your favorite board games and why?

I'm not a fan of boardgames, though I have some friends who are so I sometimes end up playing new stuff. The last thing I played (actually we are in the middle of a “campaign”) is an “Arkham horror” game that is somewhat halfway between a boardgame and a TTRPG (I don't think it's the same game you have Inky). Since I'm not a fan of boardgames but on the other hand I'm a fan of TTRPGs I didn't like it very much, because I kept thinking “so why don't we play the Call of Chtulhu TTRPG”.

The problem is that while the “RPG” parts of the game are good to create the feeling of the setting, the rigidity of the boardgame part somertimes pops up and clashes with the RPG part, also it is a bit ambiguous because in some situations I tended to play it the way I play an RPG (doing what would be natural for my charachter to do in a certain situation) even though it was evident from the map and the rules that it was meaningless and potentially suicidal. Other players played differently but this killed the immedesimation for me.

Still, an interesting experiment: maybe people who are less used to TTRPGs would ask less from the TTRPG part of the game and would like it more.

I never played a TTRPG. I'm not a fan of traditional fantasy settings, most people are as unfamiliar with it as I am, so I'd have to study it and locate a group to join (I'm not a fan of playing with strangers like that)… most of them probably wouldn't like playing with a complete beginner and I really don't feel like going at it online, where chats look confusing and on forums it could take weeks for someone to reply. Maybe if the entire world and story would be customized around the characters I and others make up from scratch just to help us ease into this type of game and have lots of fun, but I can tell you already that no one will ever do that. So I'm not against the general idea of TTRPG, it's just that it's not very mainstream, I have 0 experience and I generally prefer games I can play without everyone from the same group showing up, knowing that I'm lucky if I can get people to come over once a year for my birthday.

If it'd be like it's in HarmonQuest, I'd go for it in a heartbeat, but I can imagine it's not as simple and no group is like that.

I loved board games growing up, they were always a way to have fun with your peers whenever playing outside wasn't an option. Connect 4, Scrabble, Sorry, and Mousetrap were among some of my favorites, but I also enjoyed card games as well; I can remember in 8th grade our school dropped homerooms, so we just went straight to our first period classes, and since we would always have to be in the classroom early before the school day actually started, we would sit around and play a round of Uno like we were a bunch of poker buddies - fun times. Anybody ever played Viscious Uno? It certainly lives up to its name, lol.

J_Scarbrough wrote:
I loved board games growing up, they were always a way to have fun with your peers whenever playing outside wasn't an option. Connect 4, Scrabble, Sorry, and Mousetrap were among some of my favorites, but I also enjoyed card games as well; I can remember in 8th grade our school dropped homerooms, so we just went straight to our first period classes, and since we would always have to be in the classroom early before the school day actually started, we would sit around and play a round of Uno like we were a bunch of poker buddies - fun times. Anybody ever played Viscious Uno? It certainly lives up to its name, lol.

Hahaha. I was never great at Uno. Nothing that requires quick responses. Nor with any poker-like card game. I learn the rules and a day later I can't remember anything at all. I'm terrible like that. When it comes to retro… I used to play Mastermind as a child. Which to be honest looks outdated and lame with today's standards, but it's an awesome game for two players. Than there's Ludo and “Gazdálkodj Okosan”. This beauty that was the most Monopoly-like thing we've had in our “socialist era”. Probably every household had one. Its title translates to “Be smart about managing your finances” or something like that. And it even had this Sims-like feature where you could basically buy rooms and furniture for your home. :D Since the Rubik's Cube is pretty solo, we could say this was the #1 national family game here.

InkyMoondrop wrote:
Maybe if the entire world and story would be customized around the characters I and others make up from scratch

There are a lot of TTRPGS that work like this, a commercial famous example would be GURPS, or also Savage Worlds, but you can certainly find free online games with simpler rules.

In my experience starting with “free settings, light ruleset” paradoxically is more difficult for beginners, but it is not impossible.

If you instead are into Lovecraft there is the Call of Chtulhu TTRPG that has very simple rules and IMHO is good for beginners and a good game in general, it is a bit depressive because the charachters can die very easily.

Don't think that all TTRPGs are like D&D, it's like thinking that all comics are like Marvel.

PS Risus, the anything RPG is a very simplified TTRPG that can work for any setting, only 2 pages of rules. It actually works, although not perfectly.

Thing about TTRPG is only the Game master has to know the rules. The players don't. The players only have to know about putting together a character and how to operate them in the game. If you can roll dice you can do that.
That's what was so good about Chaosium TTRPG. Very simple game mechanics. Everything is percentages. Also the Chaosium game system once upon a time was used across a whole pile of games.
For the longest time D&D was arguably the worst game system out there. The most popular because it was first with the most, but an utterly awful game system. The new editions have basically reworked everything so that it works like Call of Cthulhu did thirty years ago.

InkyMoondrop wrote:
Hahaha. I was never great at Uno.

I caught on quickly, and even won my very first game . . . maybe that's why I took such a liking to it, I don't really know, but I enjoy it. My previous cell phone had an pre-installed app where you could play virtual Uno with three other (AI?) generated players.

My sister loves various party games and keeps inflicting them upon the family. All kinds of various card games with word association or matching. Being a pretty trivial minded group we've also played Trivial Pursuit.

I conveted all my RPG stuff into story ideas around the turn of the 21st century.I had way too many ideas for way too many games. Even designed a couple of my own games but that was a long time ago.

My ex was a massive fan of them, especially all those new popular card games. But she loved classic stuff like Risk too - I taught her Stratego and Chess but the skill difference was too huge because she was still a beginner.

Games of pure skill such as chess have never appealed to me much, for the reason ozoneocean just mentioned. Either you or your opponent are likely to win most of the time, unless you happen to be equally matched, which is why I prefer backgammon. It has a lovely balance of skill and chance which seems in tune with the realities of life to me. And it's an old game.
I also love Cluedo, classic version if possible, because it's fun to pretend you're a character in an Agatha Christie murder mystery.

Stratego is awesome and I spent a lot of time in my early teens playing it; nowadays I play it only once or twice a year with my cousin at Christmas.

I have some friends who are big fans aof boardgames, my understanding is that there was a sort of revolution in the board games industry in the last 20 years or so and now there are many more new board games by specific authors.

The most famous boardgames of this new generation are AFAIK Carcassonne and Catan, both with very simple rules, but there are really really many.
I think internet made it possible for this kind of niche interests to become more marketable, so today we have much many more niche comics (graphic novels in particular), TTRPGS, boardgames etc. than when I was a kid, when there was a very restricted number of titles in each category.

Risk is all dice rolling. Chances are you will reach the impasse over Japan or Australia. Either one you will simply run out of forces before conquering and whoever holds them will hold on long enough to get a trio of cards and break out and then it's the slog back to the islands. There are ways around it namely allowing airborne attacks or purely naval invasions. My map had a line from Japan to Australia labeled “MacArthur's Route”. There were any number of Risk variations that all aimed at avoiding the usually inevitable stalemate. Castle Risk was good because you had amphibious invasions and was just Europe and North Africa.
I used to have any number of war games with specific campaigns and battles from Waterloo and Gettysburg to World War 1 Schlieffen Plan or Battle of Tannenburg to China-Burma-India 1944 and a battalion level Battle of the Bulge game that put you right in it and you had to manage combined arms battle groups on those narrow Ardennes roads. But chess or Stratego?? Just couldn't do it. Try invading Saipan sometime or tactical armored combat with platoons of tanks and infantry throwing a company of Pzkpfw III against a squadron of Crusaders in the Western Desert.

I sold them all years ago except for a Medieval wargame that I adapted to my fantasy world with a custom map and units. It was used to game out some of the scenarios in what eventually became my comic Sword of Kings.

Ironscarf wrote:
I also love Cluedo, classic version if possible, because it's fun to pretend you're a character in an Agatha Christie murder mystery.

Oh she loved Cluedo haha! We even got a Rick and Morty themed game of it, but I like the classic better.

marcorossi wrote:
Stratego is awesome and I spent a lot of time in my early teens playing it; nowadays I play it only once or twice a year with my cousin at Christmas.

A man after my own heart! <3

bravo1102 wrote:
Risk is all dice rolling. Chances are you will reach the impasse over Japan or Australia.

Oh she was amazing at it, knew all the tricks. We played the old classic version and a Game of Thrones themed version.
She beat the pants off me- literately, because we played a strip version XD

I was never that much of a boardgame player before. Casually I'd play monopoly or cards with family an friends. Occasionally me and my mom play chess when I visit my parents house. Used to have this smalll group of friends I'd play TTRPG-games like Eon and Vampire the Masquerade with.

In recent years I got this tacrical board game called Neuroshima Hex and another strategy game called Hive. Love the post-apocalyptic theme and production quality of the art of the playing tiles representing different armies you can play, each with their own unique playing style, and easy to get into mechanics. Though I'm yet to find anyone to play this games regularly with so usually play them solo.

I saw Risk being mentioned. My friends and I played it excessively for some time, the old variant with sturdy playing pieces and a map full of additional lines and islands made with markers, and one card was missing because one of the players ate it so no-one could contest his claim of having won the mission. As the old map would just fold in half, we'd end any stalemate with a “nuclear strike”, which translates as slamming the two halves together. Great foggy memories!

Scrabble in various languages is another favourite of mine. Unfortunately, Plattdütsch is off-limits, because it has no fixed spelling rules. That is, there is currently another attempt at that kind of thing, but everyone knows it's going to fail like all of the others.
The great thing about Scrabble is that it's another game that's great for making up additional rules as you go along. See a pattern emerging?

The real classic around here is Skat, which not many people can be convinced to play any more very often, so I got a little rusty too. It's an old German card game which only uses 32 cards of a set, starting with 7. The rules may seem a bit complicated - Wikipedia makes them look positively confusing, and as I've often done in the past, I wonder whether Captain Kirk's famous Fizzbin rules were inspired by such an attempt at explaining Skat in writing - but, trust me, with some practice and one or two beers you can actually get a grip on it pretty quickly. It's much, much easier to learn by doing than trying to get any sense out of any written explanation, and once you get into the flow, it's as easy as pie.
Unfortunately, you don't get to make up rules as you go along - the others will call you out - but I kinda have a soft spot for it anyway.

So, because of my springtime allergies, our honeymoon sort of got cancelled (neither of us could've gotten any sleep with a shared room and there wasn't anything to do there really around the hotel either) we decided to stay at home and just relax, eat out somewhere, go see a play, try some new board games. We've had a lot of fun. We ended up trying Pandemic (we won twice, but we've yet to play it without forgetting a rule at some crucial moment so in reality we've lost twice) I instantly fell in love with the game. Such a great cooperative one. Then we've tried Cascadia, which despite being the number 1 chill game on many ppls toplists, managed to frustrate her, probably because it's competitive and it takes some time for her to get the hang of it. It's okay, I'm the same. The game is very nice. And we'll try Vagrantsong on Monday. Now this one I really wanted to try since I spotted it last year on that board game expo, because it's almost the same concept as my webcomic: Mirage (ghost train, old / retro graphic style, saving souls/spirits) and since we're both beginners, it's going to take a lot of effort to get going (it's not the easiest of games to play because of all the details to memorize and all the rule changes) but it looks super fun and it's a campaign game so there's a continuous story with decisions affecting future outcomes. Although it's what ppl call a “boss battler” or sometihng and it appears to have simplifed RPG mechanics, the story and the style are all over it, I'm very much looking forward to trying it.