Alice is Missing

game night, RPG

Last night Jeff, Diego, Charlene, and myself gathered together to play the ttrpg Alice is Missing.

Alice is Missing has become this mythical like experience that if you enjoy RPG’s you have to try. I think a combination of reviews and word of mouth have contributed to it achieving this.

A lot of this buzz is based around its unique mechanic of being a silent RPG played solely through text messages, plus the emotional experience the theme and collaborative storytelling give.

I’ve had the Alice is Missing rpg in physical and digital forms for nearly two years. I just never got a chance to play it.

Well that was until last night.

Plans were made, interest noted. Eventually after the usual song and dance to negotiate a date, we had all could make.

As the day got closer I watched and rewatched videos of the rules on YouTube.

The excitement and trepidation was building up.

Game day and I’m reading the rulebook.

“Oh bugger I need to print stuff off.”

Then my next thought was “have I got enough ink?”

Luckily this was not a last minute realisation and I had time to find out I barely had enough ink in the printer. I got the blank character sheets printed along with the game sheets and five of the posters before there was not enough ink.

I was spared a dash to Tescos. I had enough to go with.

On the drive over to Charlene’s humble abode my mind started to ponder things about our game that evening.

Was I in a good enough emotional place to handle the sort of subjects that could crop up during the session?

I’m still a bit fragile from the passing of Nan. Talking about her can be quite hard at times.

Just the previous day a friend told me they had cancer and was starting a course of radiotherapy. During our time together I couldn’t help noticing that I thought they looked a bit frail. It was certain moments. Not all the time. Maybe I was reading too much into what I thought I saw. I have to admit I was hit hard by the news. Obviously memories of my friend Ben came back to me.

Back when I did the first aid course for Tesco and we did the resuscitation bit of the training it really hit me hard. Memories of trying to resuscitate Dad and Nan came flooding back. I couldn’t fight back the tears. I had to leave the room.

I’d never for the life of me would have thought I’d react like that.

So knowing the sort of things Alice is Missing could go into, would I have a similar reaction?

I didn’t feel I was in the strongest emotional state for this game.

Sitting in the Asda car park near to Charlene’s I ordered Dominos pizza for us all as I waited for our agreed time to arrive. I’d said I’d provide snacks and pizza as Charlene was hosting.

That snack bit had seen me making a last minute dash round one of the stores I used to work in before it closed.

After a warm welcome from Charlene’s two dogs and the others arriving we setup.

I really like the setup process. The rulebook talks through the whole process for the facilitator, highlighting which bits need to be read out aloud etc.

We covered the important X cards, lines and veil’s safety tools. In a game like this they are a must.

The pizza arrived just before we recorded our messages for Alice.

After having our fill of pizza we finished off the setup and started playing in silence.

Wow!

The 90 minutes flew by.

It was such a compelling experience.

With the only sound being the official soundtrack that the timer plays it felt so weird initially playing in silence. The only communication via WhatsApp chat.

The silence added to the impact of a certain event.

I was surprised that I didn’t seem to have had the same emotional experience as others had had.

Maybe that was due to our personal histories or we didn’t go into graphic detail on what could be described as the more triggering subjects. Or the cards that we drew for the key moments. Or all of the above.

I was expecting a Twin Peaks or 13 Reasons vibe to the session. They start off with the death. Which isn’t how this plays out.

Whatever the reason we had a good time. We really enjoyed ourselves.

I’m glad it was Jeff, Diego and Charlene who were the ones I experienced Alice is Missing with, and it was not at the community centre. The place where you play it and with whom is key I think. There needs to be that element of trust and safety because of the games themes.

Anyway I’ll definitely play again, and glad I backed the expansion on kickstarter.

A magical Friday evening

Commander, game night, MtG

I’ve not talked about or played MtG for a long time now. Which should worry WotC. Some-one who loves the game, loves playing it. Not playing it,buying product, or talking about it.

But that changed Friday evening when I taught Dave and Clack how to play.

On the way home I had popped in to my FLGS to try and pick up a copy of the game night kit free for all kit (a box of five standard decks that can be opened up and played by a group of friends). Sadly they did not have one.

They had also sold out of jump start decks.

I needed something I could use with new players. That was new player friendly.

So I ended up with a Starter Kit, plus a Pioneer Challenger deck (I already had two others I could use).

A mad dash back home in record time (all the traffic lights en route were in my favour) to pick up what I needed for the evening. Saw me arrive 10 minutes later than we had arranged.

I started off teaching MtG using the Starter Kit decks for Dave and Clack, whilst I used an old Card Kingdom battle deck I had.

This was a fun first game. They both attacked me a lot declaring me as the main threat because I knew how to play the game!

I managed to stabilise at 4 health before being able to hit back and grab a victory.

Next I gave out a random 2021 D&D Commander deck (not the current set) and went over the brief changes to the format.

Our commanders

I need to look into the themes of these decks. Mine was obviously a dragon deck and all about getting them out. Clack’s deck was possibly a voltron style deck. Dave’s was the confusing one, and seemed all about venturing through dungeons and getting those benefits and graveyard shenanigans?

This game Clack got mana screwed. It happens. As a MtG player you just accept it happens, and hope you live long enough to try and mount some sort of comeback once the lands start showing up.

In a game of Commander being mana screwed might be an advantage early on as other players don’t see you as a threat, and leave you alone as they beat up on each other.

I was ramping up nicely in this game, got my commander out. Was the monarch (a great mechanic for Commander) spamming out tokens. Life was good for the dragons.

Unchecked I was just able to swing in and single shot both Dave and Clack for the victory.

Our second game it was my turn to get mana screwed. It happens. See previous comments above about it.

Eventually I was able to start playing cards and building up a presence on the battlefield.

Clack’s voltron deck was firing off, and some rather threatening creatures were being equipped and made nastier. Dave and I were at risk of dying from Commander damage by Clack.

Dave made it hard for Clack and I to block his attacks, as we were for large chunks of the game only able to block with legendary creatures.

He was also venturing through those dungeons a lot and pulling creatures back from the graveyard.

Our decks were doing stuff.

I think this game felt more commandery than our previous one. There was more politic stuff going on. More “don’t attack me I’m not a threat, look at that big creature they have. Now that’s a threat!”

Despite that distinct lack of mana for what felt like an eternity I managed to hold on in their and win.

It was a fun evening of MtG.

Not only did I get to introduce new players to the game. But I was reminded what I like so much about the game.

Plus the Starter Kit and Pioneer decks I can play with Nath when I visit him next week.

Win, win.

Grp2: When last we left our heroes… #13

D&D, D&D Grp2, post mortem, RPG

Post Mortem

SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following part of the post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign. You may want to avoid this part of the post and join me in a future one. Don’t give in to temptation go read something else.

We were two players down this session. For one it was the second session in a row they had missed so I need to find out if they are still wanting to be in the group.

The second was due to illness. So instead of some-one controlling their character I made an excuse up that the character needed to rest after the previous sessions efforts and would catch them up.

Even so we started later than planned which meant a shorter session.

The party are still working their way through the endless warrens (or the Caves of Chaos map I am using for them).

This part of the campaign is a bit of a dungeon crawl. But not a slugfest for sure. They are getting encounters of some sort in most of the rooms on the map that are driven by the dungeon encounters deck.

I’d like to think that the players are having an interesting exploration of the dungeon that isn’t just a murder hobo slaughterhouse with a combat in each room.

In fact the only possible combat they could have had didn’t happen as the ogre failed the check and had to go off and eat the ogre corpse in a nearby room.

But the next session things are going to be more violent.

They still have no idea about the two fungi they are carrying. We’ll see what they will do with them. The temptation to say “just eat them for crying out” is just so strong sometimes during the session. But I resist and don’t give in.

Right I think that covers it for the session I’ll see you in the next session prep post.

Big game weekend

Fenland Gamers, Game day, game night

This weekend I played only three games.

They were not short games.

It started off with an all in game of Dune Imperium.

Thanks to a bit of AP from a player this game took a lot longer than it should.

The game went to the full ten rounds with Dave managing to push his final score to a whooping 14 victory points. Very impressive for a first play.

We finally left the WSM Community Centre just before 11pm!

Still I really love Dune Imperium with both expansions. I must get the deluxe expansion. But the thing putting me off is the upgraded dreadnoughts are not available outside the US.

Saturday saw the regular D&D session happening. But the post mortem post will go into that. So I’ll spare you the pain here of me waffling on about it.

Sunday afternoon was a six player all in game of Scythe.

I foolishly forgot to make notes of who played what faction with which player board.

  • Republic of Polania (White) – Archie
  • Saxony Empire (Black) – Marcin
  • Nordic Kingdoms (Dark Blue) – Claire
  • Rusviet Union (Red) – Me (I had the agriculture board)
  • Vesna (Light Blue) – Rise of Fenris – Dave
  • Fenris (Orange) – Rise of Fenris – Charlene

For this game I used the War objective track, along with the modular board. The resolution tile for this game was Mission Possible. The two wind gambit cards thus game were Reap and War Correspondent.

I could have made the game more aggressive with the rivals module but decided that that, and the mech and tech modules were a module too far for the two noobs, and two partial noob players.

I had two great objectives for this aggression biased game. Sadly I completed neither.

The game was a blast.

I love just how much variability this game has meaning no two games are the same.

At six players we were in danger of running out of time before the community centre closed.

But still that was to be expected.

Not many games played over the weekend. But three great big games were.

Still here,possibly,maybe…

life, the universe, and everything, still alive

A week is a long time in something or other. Especially when this blog appear to go all silent.

It’s been busy at work. A different kinda busy being in education again.

Yesterday was a great day because I got to do game coding with the students. But we aren’t here for that sort of chat.

There have been a couple of new arrivals in the week.

At the start of the week another copy of the 2004 edition of Doom the board game arrived that also had the expansion with it. I had to buy it like this as the was no way the seller would have separated the expansion out.

Midweek I decided for some reason that I’d get the War of the Ring card game to play with Nathan. There is no way Nathan has a table large enough to play the War of the Ring board game. He likes the Lord of the Ring movies. So War of the Ring the card game arrived Thursday. I can’t wait to play the game with Nathan at the start of the Easter holidays.

I’m not going to write now about last nights gaming. That can wait until I do a weekend gaming post. However I did do a bit of board gaming business last night.

Marcin had been after a copy of Outlive so we came to a deal last night that saw the game leave my collection and join his. In return on Sunday my collection gets a copy of Conan the board game.

In conclusion I’m still alive! And leading a pretty boring, mundane life. See you in the next post, I’ve got a D&D session to plan for.

Doomed Civilisations

Game day, game night, life, the universe, and everything

It’s been a great weekend of gaming.

Friday evening saw Doom the board game, 2004 edition get to the table.

We had a blast but you know I’m not going to say anything about that now. I’m saving that for a future Doom post (is anyone reading them, or finding them interesting?)

The 2016 edition and another copy of the 2004 edition with the expansion haven’t arrived yet. But I’m looking forward to their arrival.

Saturday saw Tapestry hitting the table with the third and final expansion Fantasies and Futures (F&F) thrown in with everything else. So it was a true all in experience.

We were using just the new civilisations from F&F so we didn’t need to take into account any civ adjustments.

Our starting civilisations

Also I used my usual trick of mixing the new cards in so that we get to see the new stuff during play. Which basically means the new cards were shuffled in with the top third of the respective deck.

The house rules were used for the game were the usual get two civilisations, choose one. The other being when drawing a tapestry card draw two, keep one.

I felt my first two tapestry cards were very thematic for my civilisation. But at a couple of points in the game I did top deck some pretty good stuff. One was the tapestry card Tapestry! Plus the Elder Ones civilisation, or a space tile that gave me 13 victory points.

My first two tapestry cards

Despite not going up on the exploration track that far. I didn’t get out of the first era. I still made it into space thanks to a tapestry card.

The Illuminati civilisation I can see being adjusted later in the year. It was very powerful in this game I thought. I’m either getting extra stuff if the opponents use the dice. Or I’m getting up to 18 victory points an income phase. It does force your opponents into making difficult decisions about what to do.

My final two civilisations (top) and Dave’s (bottom)

Add in getting the Elder Ones basically giving me an extra turn after I’ve done my fifth income phase.

I loved the new stuff F&F bought to the game. Charms are cool. Making the decision of which tapestry card to play and when even harder. Plus having stuff trigger on the fifth era income phase.

In terms of what it adds to gameplay it’s perfect as there is no real overhead to using them.

And OMG the new rulebook! So flipping good. Half the physical size. But the complete reference for the whole game including the expansions.

As you can see the final scores below show a comprehensive victory.

Final scores

That’s my highest score ever in the game. Wow!

Now all I’ve got to do is build the folded space insert!

“Hey, not too rough” #5

Doom, fps, nintendo, switch, video games

Wow five posts already and we haven’t finished the first scenario yet!

You can find all my previous posts in this project here if you are interested or need to catch up for some reason.

E1M4 Command Control

I’m back into the sequential stream of levels.

There is a term in D&D for a party of adventurers that just goes around killing everything in sight, and looting the corpses. Murder Hobos.

It’s hard not to feel like a murder hobo whilst playing Doom.

There is none of this sitting round a camp fire and negotiating with the imps or marines. This is strictly shoot first, loot the corpse, and ask questions like “how the feck do I get to that power up?” later.

In Doom I am the ultimate murder hobo. Or I would be if I found all or even some of the secret rooms on these later levels.

Me with the Doom Guy (built from Lego) at the Computer Museum Cambridge 2/3/2023

The one thing I do seem to be doing is getting a 100% kill rate.

There will be no witnesses to this murder hobos antics.

E1M5 Phobos Lab

The slaughter continues as the maps get more complicated. But also more rewarding.

I love how these later levels play with lighting. Particularly when you get a maze like section and the light flickers so you only get to see partially where things are and any potential threat. Suddenly out of the darkness a fireball is coming at you or a spectre is in your face. You can hear the grunts or heavy breathing. The only clues death is awaiting around the corner.

I fire indiscriminately in all directions wasting scarce ammunition trying to lure out the threats.

E1M6 Central Processing

I blast through the level continuing my low discovery rate of secret rooms.

But the body count keeps on running up.

E1M7 Computer Station

I spend much of this level frustrated I can’t get to the outside or even to the pools of acid with their tantalising bonus items. Upon completion my secret room percentage is zero.

I make myself a promise to revisit this level and get to those bonus items.

It’s a hollow promise as I know that I’ll make the same decisions, and feel the same frustration next time I play through Doom.

You’d think I’d learn my lesson. But time will fade my memory between plays, and I’ll forget. Doomed to keep making the same mistake.

E1M8 Phobos Anomaly

This is it the final level of Knee-Deep.

The clues are here that something bad is awaiting you on this level. After clearing the demons it’s time to stock up on the carelessly left around ammunition, first aid kits, shield and health bonuses.

This sort of subtle is even obvious to some-one like me.

The doors open from what could easily be holding pens for not one but two Barons of Hell.

As they stomp out of their boxes I move to the side using the boxes as cover. I load up the rocket launcher, and dive from cover unleashing a storm of rockets on them before hiding again behind my cover and any response.

I do this a couple of times before they are just mounds of flesh on the floor.

These were way easier than I remember. Maybe I’m confusing them with their more dangerous end of level bosses.

I step on the portal with it’s demon head image and pentagram. The screen goes black. Then in the darkness I’m surrounded by the noises of marines, and imps. There are flashes of light illumination the enemies I’m surrounded by. I open fire in a futile attempt to take out as many as I can before departing this mortal world. The screen fades to black. And is filled by red text explaining how I’ve ended up on the shores of hell, and the only way out is forward and playing the next scenario.

We know I’m going forward this murder hobo is no quitter.

“Hey, not too rough” #4

Doom, fps, nintendo, switch

Welcome back to my exploration of Doom the video game on the Nintendo Switch through interpretive dance.

You can find all my previous posts in this project here if you are interested or need to catch up for some reason.

E1M9 Military Base

I’ve taken the path less trodden!

Well for me it’s not I always take this diversion from the sequential flow through the levels.

Imps imprisoned in the middle of a court yard start firing in my direction as soon as I step out into the open.

They are easy targets, like shooting fish in a barrel.

Once they have been silenced it’s time to take one of the exits and start clearing a safe passage round the level.

Believe it or not there have actually been two movies based on Doom.

Doom the movie (2005)

When you consider the source material, and how this is not a narrative driven game. Doom and it’s backstory is no Last of Us. However it does have a paper thin backstory setting up the game. Which is more than the “classic” boardgame Battleships has, and they managed to make a movie out of that!

For the Rock aka Dwayne Johnson, Doom the movie is one of his early Hollywood efforts in the journey from WWE megastar to box office stardom.

But his isn’t the only “big” name on the credits. Starring along side Dwayne are Karl Urban (who at the time had LoTR recognition with audiences) and Rosamund Pike (who had been in a Bond movie a couple years previous). Plus a solid supporting cast with the likes of Richard Brake and Dexter Fletcher.

I’d sum the cast up at the time as semi-household names, not big box office stars like a Cruise or the Rock (now).

Naturally at some point in the movie you have to give the audience that fps camera. And the director does not disappoint.

To be fair to the movie the special effects don’t look that dated watching the movie now. Sometimes the special effects of movies don’t age well. These surprisingly hold up!

Back in 2005 I was still the family man. I didn’t see this at the cinema for sure, and most likely watched this on dvd with the kids. For sure this is the sort of movie I would never have got my ex-wife to go and see on the big screen. I think it would have been a struggle to get her to watch it on the small screen.

My ex-wife was, and still, is not a video game player. When it came to an fps she had no spatial awareness, and wasn’t able to process where she was on a map. It was painful watching her attempt to play the most simple of level designs.

So I think it is most definitely not doing her a disservice to claim she was not a fan of the Doom video games. I’m not even sure she would even have been familiar with the name.

I suspect my copy was region 1. At the time the majority of my dvd purchases were from the US. The region 1 version of a movie was often cheaper (even taking into account postage) and available months before the UK was due to get it. Once or twice the region 1 dvd was out before the movie had even hit the cinemas in the UK. Yes sometimes I got hit with import duties. But that was like a mini game I was playing with the taxman. The majority of the time I never got hit.

Let’s face it this movie was never going to get an Oscar nomination, or any other prestigious award. At best it might have been in the running for a raspberry.

The version I’m watching on Amazon is the extended edition that runs at 113 minutes. Back when I saw it originally that run time was 104 minutes for the theatrical release.

At best the movie can be described as average. Which is more than can be said for an awful lot of video game based movies.

After watching the movie I am no closer to understanding the psyche of the human soul. However I had an enjoyable time. Which is the best you can hope for with this type of movie.

As a final aside I think this movie has to be considered a box office flop. Going by the cost to make the movie (excluding the marketing budget) it barely made that at the box office. For a movie to be considered to have broken even it normally has to take at the box office the production budget and marketing budget combined. Doom the movie did not get close to that figure.

Doom Annihilation (2019)

I don’t remember Doom Annihilation having a cinematic release. Which doesn’t mean it didn’t. It just means it wasn’t a massive hit if it did. I suspect this was a straight to dvd/streaming service effort.

So watching this now will be a first for me.

I’m setting my expectations to low.

The Military Base introduces another new monster to slaughter with one of my arsenal in the form of the Spectre. Spectres are partially invisible demons. You get to see their “shimmer” often too late.

But a couple of shotgun blasts makes quick work of them. Although that’s often at the last moment as they appear out of nowhere in the dim light.

I’m pretty sure the last time I played this on the 360 I had the lighting turned up so it was not as dark, and I had less surprises. In fact I’ve done that more than once. Is it cheating? The game lets me do it. But that’s more to take into account the variability in monitors/televisions.

There’s a sweet spot on the brightness. I seem to remember on one game (probably one of the Resident Evil franchise) they recommend adjusting it until you are just able to see a certain object.

But alls fair in the extermination of these demon spawn. Sadly I’ve not played around with these settings on this play through. They are the default, so I have to contend with spectres being harder to detect at times.

It’s a good job my expectations were low. I can’t help watching the opening few minutes without comparing it to Aliens.

The scenes are similar, marines waking up from stasis as they near their destination. But it’s the set design, costumes, and acting. You believe that they are marines in Aliens. They look, feel, talk like a unit of marines.

Sadly these marines in Doom Annihilation look and sound more like children in fancy dress.

There is a reason this has gone straight to streaming. With an obvious low budget, poor script, at best run of the mill direction and editing, no name cast.

There are obvious nods to the video game source with use of the chain saw and blowing up of barrels.

But I go back to my Aliens comparison, or with zombie movies. Even when it’s meant to feel like the monsters are over running the marines it doesn’t. You wish that the director had watched other zombie movies or Aliens so he could be influenced in a positive way.

I think it wants to be Aliens, so many scenes seem similar. Making me think I could be watching Aliens.

This movie is just a stinker.

Time to return to the flow of things and E1M4 Command Control in the next post.

Little life update

life, the universe, and everything, still alive

As I’m working on the next part of my Doom epic for this weekend I thought I’d just ramble on about stuff.

I’m getting the board game side of the Doom project in place so that I can get it to the table. Which naturally will then feed into the posts.

I’m not sure what folks think of the Doom posts they are a bit out there for this blog.

The latest Tapestry expansion and folded space insert have dropped through the letter box. So I have an excuse to get that back to the table but before I do I have an insert to build.

A few Marvel Champions also arrived. Which means I have all the big expansions now along with a few more heroes. But I’ll talk about that once I’ve finished organising the cards I already have. Which I’m in the progress of doing.

A lot of card sleeves are on their way so I can sleeve the Doom games when they arrive and the just arrived Tapestry expansion.

I’ve got the expansion for Deep Sea Adventure (Charlene got me a copy while at Airecon). Well I will have once I see Charlene. I owe her one Hostage Negotiator play mat too.

That’s about it for now laters.

My Weekends Gaming

bgstat, Fenland Gamers, Game day, game night

Just a brief post to share which games I played this weekend.

Friday was club for Fenland Gamers and I got to not only meet Dave and his partner Clack. But also got to play a couple of games with them.

I had a blast introducing them to Libertalia Winds of Galecrest and Survive Escape from Atlantis.

Libertalia was a four player game that saw the first two days with three of us playing the same cards. But more worrying for Clank was we played the same cards for the whole of that first voyage. No one wants to be on the same wavelength as me! That way leads to madness.

I did manage to scrape the win by a point, and introduced Dave and Clank to the name “first loser” for the runner up/second place. Jeff I will forever be grateful that you introduced me to that name.

Survive for such a mean game is so much fun for everyone playing. But I guess that does depend on whose playing to some extent.

All I know about our game Friday night was we had great fun playing the game. What’s more I some how managed to win! That’s back to back victories for me playing either of the Survive games. I’d like to claim it was due to skill but considering I don’t have a clue about the value of which survivors I get to safety it’s pure luck.

Saturday illness human and canine took out two of the three of our D&D group that could make the planned session.

So Luke and I met up, grabbed a burger (double quarter pounder with cheese, and cheesy chips), before playing Red Rising.

I really do like Red Rising and the choices you have to make during the game. How I ever thought this wasn’t for me I don’t know.

In our two games that we played (we both won one a piece) I needed a red card to trigger the end game bonus on one of my cards. Did any come up during either game? Not one. Between games I had to check the deck to make sure there was some there. Luckily I had a card that allowed during the end of the game allowed you to choose a colour.

I did use some new functionality within the bgstat app that is in beta testing and that is score sheets.

For some of the games in bgstat with the score sheets functionality enabled when recording a game play or viewing one you will see the little score sheet icon (see magnified bit in the image above).

Click on that icon and you are taken to the score sheet for the game, where you can enter or view the score sheet for that play.

I really liked how the score sheet worked for Red Rising. This is really cool. If they end up charging me to use this in the future when it’s ready for prime time (which it seems it is) I’d happily pay for it.

Bgstat just gets better and better.

Right got to end this post, plan next weekends gaming (hoping to get Doom to the table) and rearrange D&D.