Talking Boardgames: Pandemic

Talking Boardgames: Pandemic

Pandemic is a cooperative boardgame designed by Matt Leacock and published here in Germany by Pegasus Spiele. With three different settings of difficulty and a strict cooperative victory or loss for all players, it separates itself from most other boardgames. Of course there are other cooperative games out there but it is still a niche in game-mechanics.

Each player takes on the role of a member of the CDC, the international agency for the control of diseases, in combating the simultaneous outbreak of four different pandemics on a global scale. This story is supplemented greatly by the games mechanics. Every player has a set number of moves and all randomness in the game is the result of some clever card-drawing mechanics including the re-shuffle of one of the stacks. Players travel around the globe to dampen the diseases’ effects in hot-spots, all the while trying to coordinate themselves towards finding the cure for each type of pandemic.

Playing Oblivion Day 2 part 4: Caves of Loot

 This is part of an ongoing series. If you want to start at the beginning, go here.

It's early 2012 and I'm playing The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Why? Because I (finally) can. Join me on my path to glory and the stabilization of the status quo in almost-Tolkien-land.

The winged creature I had spotted fires off a spell at Martor as he goes in to attack. Luckily the creature doesn’t realize that the man attacking it isn’t very proficient at using his bow. It could just fly up and pepper Martor with majick but instead it hovers a few feet above the ground and doesn’t even retreat to a safe distance when being rushed and subsequently murdered with a long, sharp blade. It had been guarding a door in the hillside that probably represents the entrance to another dungeon. Not quite fully loaded with loot, Martor decides to go look what’s to be found in there. After all, the flying creature was just labeled “Kobold”, not “Winged Demon” or some such thing, so it doesn’t seem too dangerous…

Things to come 3

Another month has passed. So what's going to go on here in March 2012?

-The conclusion of the Schmidtennistan-Files. This time we're going to get around reviewing the army that was apparently defending my grandfather's bedroom in the late 1930s.

-More pen and paper thoughts! I'll give you some hints on world-creation for a low-fantasy setting. We'll see where it goes.

-More Oblivion. This month we'll conclude day 2, which means that I'll actually have to play the game again in the near future...

-Another Board Game Review: Pandemic. See if you are going to get infected or not (I just had to make that joke. Sorry!).

I have to admit that three posts per week seem realistic in my current life-situation. Also it's quite possible that I'm going to release some small-scale video games soon, as part of the Rock-Paper-Shotgun Gamepunk-Movement. Stay tuned on that one, though I'm not going to promise too much. Also, and this is all hypothetical right now, it's possible that a buddy and I are going to make a mobile app in the foreseeable future. Maybe.

I'm outta here!

Recommendations February 2012

In this category of posts I will highlight three links I find worthwhile and tell you, the readers, why that is so. In every post like this I will link to one podcast, one other blog, and one free game, be it video-, table-top, RP-, or other. I'll try to keep this as regular category at the end of the month/beginning of the next month, hence the “of the month” attached to each category. Take that however you will. All things presented here are things I listen to/read/play on a regular basis and that is my only certificate of quality I'm offering here.

Podcast of the month: Close the Airlock!
Another week, another actual-play RP-Podcast. These guys are pretty new but spewing out new episodes at a frightening rate. It's a podcast with a regular group of people playing a campaign of Traveller so a somewhat retro-sci-fi setting is the order of the day. With decent production values and a (so far) cleverly designed campaign this podcast highlighting one of the somewhat underplayed games of classical roleplaying I have very high hopes for this one and so should you! Check it out!

Blog of the month: Shut Up & Sit Down
A blog and webshow about boardgames in all their glory and different styles. The two guys running the show over there are video-game-journalists in their everyday-lives and do this as a side-project showing their passion for playing physical games around the table with real people. Be forewarned before going there as they tell it in their about-page and they mean it: You will spend money on games they review. If you're into boardgames at all. If not, you probably stopped reading three sentences ago so why bother?

Free game of the month: Transcendence
George Moromisato's epic space-shooter-roguelike has been out for a while now but it's definetly worth a try. The game is a top-down 2-D-Shooter in a series of randomized solar systems connected by stargates. You loot wrecks of enemy ships or buy equipment at space stations, take jobs for different factions and try to upgrade your ship to keep up with the constantly increasing difficulty of the next solar systems until you reach the last gate, guarded by the Iocrym, to breach the blockade keeping you in the space designated to be the human wilderness-preserve. A steep difficulty and the procedural generation of the universe require equal parts of luck, skill, and good choices to ever get through this but failing can be a lot of fun too.

Play Diary: Rogue Survivor - Vinnie Tarver

In this play-diary I'll do something different to the ongoing Oblivion-series and play a little roguelike called Rogue Survivor, which can be found for free here. Roguelikes are games usually based on procedural generation of worlds, the programmers choice of mechanical depth over graphics, and usually a high degree of difficulty. A famous example would be NetHack. Anyways, Rogue Survivor takes place after zombies have started to overrun your city and you play a random survivor (or zombie, if you want to), just trying to survive for as long as possible. My first Play-Diary of RS can be found here, the second one here.


This was the first time I played with the new rule-set of "classic" zombie-apocalypse, foregoing any mutated monstrosities and skeletons and allowing only zombified men and women in the game. The addition of corpses to this version makes things interesting too. I'd figured it would be easier without zombie-masters around but I was wrong. Also, did that serial-killer get updated too..?

Day 0:

I woke up smashed after this party in the central park villa club. Man, there were people running around all frantic and the radio was on, broadcasting some stuff about the end of the world. I didn't believe it but then I saw them: Actual freaking zombies. I got the hell out of there and ran across the street into the police station. The cops were actually handing out weapons and body armor to civilians. Everything is going crazy! I didn't want to be the one guy without a weapon so I got a shotgun, some shells, riot-gear and a flashlight. I wanted to hide in the basement-cell block so I went down there. There was a guy in one of the cells begging me to let him go and that the CHAR corporation was after him and whatnot. I reluctantly opened the cell and he came out and told me where the secret CHAR facility was that started all of this. Then his body split open and a monstrous creature broke out of him. I screamed like a baby, which got two cops on the plan to check things out. They opened up with their guns and the thing came at us. I emptied my shotgun into it as it ate one of the cops alive. It came at me too while I was frantically reloading, bit me but I finished it off. The bite later became infected, I need to do something about it. There were some army-rations in the basement of which I took some. Then I left, before anyone notices that it had been me who opened that cell. I went to the Western Central subway-station because just the other week I had noticed a sign for a cold-war era bomb-shelter there, which is where I'm camped out right now. Tomorrow I'll go up and find medical help. Hopefully the national guard will be there and it will all be over by then.

Playing Oblivion Day 2 part 3: Unrelated Cult

This is part of an ongoing series. If you want to start at the beginning, go here.

It's early 2012 and I'm playing The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Why? Because I (finally) can. Join me on my path to glory and the stabilization of the status quo in almost-Tolkien-land.

I press my horse onwards and leave the Imperial Capital behind in order to get some more adventuring done for the second time. Is there anything going to stop Martor from exploring new towns, finding ancient ruins, discovering new lands? Definitely not and the stupid localization won’t stop me from enjoying this game, even if it breaks in-game riddles (sometimes I wonder how these people make money with these sorts of translations. Strongly reminds me of the German version of Futurama where you could totally notice whenever the translators failed to understand a joke and pathetically failed at delivering any resemblance thereof or, worse, simply translated badly). So I decide to head towards a nearby city named Skingrad that Martor and Martin (what a duo) must have passed while fast-travelling to the Blades’ secret fortress but that I haven’t seen in-game yet.

Animals are the better NPCs…

Video game programmers have been giving you a “friend” to go a bit of your in-game journey with you for decades now. It has always been a nice thing not to be all alone in a virtual world, a friend is someone who isn’t out to get you. Or a major annoyance and the buster of the suspension of disbelief.

There are four basic types of non-hostile NPCs (non-player-characters for those unfamiliar with the lingo) in video-games. The first two types of NPC are relevant bystanders, such as shop-owners and quest-givers, and civilians, who mill about just to make the world seem more alive. These have been present from the early days of RPGs and have since invaded other genres, such as action-based or strategic games. As backdrops and static shopping-implements, these characters are okay. The other two types are what can get really frustrating: Protectees and Side-Kicks. And any combination thereof. Let’s talk about them.