The Gaming Den

I wouldn't call any of Betrayal at House on the Hill, Shadows Over Camelot*, or Mansions of Madness "cooperative games". They're team games: you have allies, but you also have enemies. *Shadows over Camelot has a cooperative variant. I only played Mansions of Madness once, but I didn't car...

I question whether unreliability of player actions has anything to do with the micromanagement problem; people can demand that you do the best action even if it's only statistically the best action. I think this is mostly a player personality problem, but it can be mitigated when players genuinely d...

Assuming that you have a "hand" of cards, and can therefore choose to "save" some cards for future checks, it is incredibly important to say exactly when you can draw more cards , and under what circumstances (if any) you are not allowed to save cards. Because anything the player...

By the way, we're about to start beta testing of the first expansion, With an Inner Light . Test kits are supposed to go out this week, but you can probably still sign up if you want. And the Nymph promo just went live in the BoardGameGeek store today! (They've got a 6-month exclusive on it as part ...

Heroes at the same location as a Corruption lose their "bonus" powers. They can still benefit from the bonus powers of heroes at other locations. Thus, a Seer in the same spot as a Corruption can't use her Prophecies (even on other heroes), but a Seer at a spot with no Corruption can use h...

Grek, you have failed your reading comprehension check. Several times. The SAME system does not make accuracy and damage of precisely equal value--Frank actually worked out an example in this post showing that they're not (they're close in his example, but they could be vastly farther apart if you c...

I've challenged Frank on the powers-of-2 thing several times, across several threads and in PMs, and never gotten an answer that I consider satisfactory. The first and longest discussion is earlier in this thread, starting with this post , where he lays out the idea that any two people whose stats s...

I don't think there's an official policy on that. If the store emails AlanEmrich@victorypointgames.com they may be able to work something out.

Avoraciopoctules wrote:What's going to be in the expansion?

At minimum, new playable characters, events, and artifacts. I'm currently testing a new "quests" mechanic.

Manxome-> Which games did you design for VPG? Darkest Night , a fantasy co-op where the players resist a conquering necromancer; reminiscent of Arkham Horror For the Crown , a cross between Chess and Dominion where you can use cards to make special moves on the chessboard or exchange them for new p...

Well, I wouldn't bother contacting Fantasy Flight, specifically, because they have in-house designers and don't accept unsolicited game submissions. There was an article about this in the Penny Arcade Report that might interest you. Short version: the guy in the article made prototypes of his games ...

Victory Point Games is having a Cyber Monday sale tomorrow--10% off everything with the coupon code Great_Gifts (case sensitive). Darkest Night has reached the top of their 60-day sales chart (which is perhaps not surprising for a game that came out 58 days ago, but is still satisfying; it may alre...

Adam has made one post on this forum, in an inactive thread, that doesn't say anything that is actually related to the content of the thread, and his signature contains a link to "Online Diplomas". I'm reasonably confident he's a spambot.

My board game Darkest Night is now officially published! You can order it here . http://victorypointgames.com/cw3/assets/product_full/DN_cover_front(LARGE).jpg For those who haven't seen it before (or who have forgotten), this is a fully-cooperative game where a band of fantasy heroes fight a gueril...

So having two turns/round is only worth +3 CR. "Only"? Am I remembering correctly that doubling the number of monsters you're fighting is supposedly a +2 CR? That doubles the number of attacks they can make, and also their total HP, number of spell slots, etc.; not to mention the tactical...

I'm told that all of the playtester positions have now been filled. 11.2 Note: All die rolls in the game favor the heroes in the event of a tie. It feels wrong to have this hidden in the necromancer section, wouldn't it fit better on the first page or something? (yes it really is minor) This is the ...

I assume playtesting as usual only works if you live in the USA? Actually, I'm pretty sure VPG accepts international playtesters. I certainly don't see anything in the sign-up instructions that would limit it to USA, and I think there were international playtesters on both of my previous two publis...

Once upon a time, I was inspired by Arkham Horror and an adventure seed from Races of War to design my own cooperative board game. The result was Darkest Night , a game about a band of heroes fighting a guerilla war against an invading necromancer. You may recall me posting print-and-play versions o...

Do you have any alternative suggestions for terms to use for those mechanics?

IIRC, Equinox only allows you to activate a season card. That means you get the effects listed under "Active:" on that season until it is deactivated. It does not inherently give you the effects listed under "Action:" on that season; you need to actually spend an action to get th...

Wow, one year to the day since your previous post! It wasn't an explicit goal, but yes, that is a consequence of the new rules. Depleting a location was kind of interesting, but I didn't think it was critical to the game, and the new system greatly reduces setup (and the number of components), so I ...

Victory Point Games is a fairly small publisher. Some retailers carry their games, but most don't. If your FLGS would like to carry their games, I'm sure VPG would be happy to set them up.

Amazon.com has also recently started listing VPG's games.

My second published board game! ---------- What turns a young man into a world-saving hero? A sacred spear, discovered at just the right moment, might just give him the edge he needs to best the evil fiend. But now the spear is locked in a treasure chest! Better make sure he finds the moon key, whic...

I'm discussing 'square root' as it means in the context of the original proof, and nothing else. Sorry. I was also discussing "square root" as it means in the context of the original proof, but I was under the impression that a radical meant "square root" and that you put a sign...

Uh, no. Try a = -1, b = -1, and c = 1/2, and see for yourself it doesn't hold as a "general" rule. Honest, go and look in an algebra textbook, it specifically says you can't use certain radical properties if the arguments are negative. It is exactly because square root means the principal...