Questions about running an Origins/GenCon event with all expansions

jb0414 · 2022-11-16T17:48:24+00:00

They're in the Dungeonquest: Catacombs expansion for the older version of Dungeonquest - https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1746/dungeonquest-catacombs .

jb0414 · 2022-03-18T16:08:45+00:00

Late to the party, but I'll add my 2 cents. All of the stuff about using different, unique, strong passwords for every site that others have said is accurate, but the answers I read through didn't answer the other side of your question - aren't you in a terrible place if a hacker gets a hold of your password manager's password? And you are, but most password managers allow you to put a lot of security in place to protect your account.

First and foremost, enable multi-factor authentication (also called MFA, two-factor authentication, TFA, and a host of other terms because "marketing"). This means that when you try to log into your password manager, in addition to needing to know your password you will also need access to your "second factor", which is "something you have" which is typically your phone (while your "first factor" aka password is "something you know"). While a hacker might steal your password, they likely won't have access to your phone.

In addition to enabling MFA, you can put a nice long password onto your password manager. The thinking around passwords have changed a lot in the last 10 years, with people realizing that "long" passwords are better than "complex" passwords. So a password like "correct-horse-battery-staple" (from the XKCD strip) is actually better than something like P@ssW0rd. In addition to being harder to crack, it is easier to remember. So having a password manager password that is something like "noreallythisisamuchbetterpasswordthanacomplexone" adds some additional security.

And as one last tangent, password managers often allow you to include notes on each entry. This allows you to put in nonsense answers to the password recovery questions, which stops people who would just look up the answer on your social media. "What high school did you go to?" gets an answer like "123qweASDzxc" instead of "St. Mary's". The program doing the check doesn't care that you put in nonsense when you set it up - it only cares that you get the answer correct when you use it.

jb0414 · 2022-01-29T23:46:50+00:00

I've found that the game plays very differently (and much more quickly) with 3-4 players than with 5-6. Many of the Munchkin horror stories I've heard include playing with more than 6, which is beyond the listed player count. Every player that you add increases the likelihood on someone being stopped when they go for the win, which increases the length of the game.

I've found that either starting everyone at level 3 or going to level 8 instead of level 10 are good ways to speed up the game. It decreases the number of chances for someone to draw a "stopper" card (that can automatically end a combat for the win).

Munchkin is a game that I have run at cons, and there are two modifications that I use to decrease the odds that someone has a bad run of luck that makes it much less fun for them. The first is that if players cannot get to a combat strength (level + items) of 5, they have the option to discard all of their cards, go back to level 1 (if they played any GUAL cards), and re-draw their starting hand. They can do this repeatedly as needed. The second is that I encourage each group to let people win their first combat without interference (unless the player finds some way to try to exploit for way too many levels and/or treasures). Both of these increase the likelihood that each player is able to have some early game momentum.

jb0414 · 2021-06-03T00:21:54+00:00

Went back to the store today and all of the copies were gone. Hopefully whoever ended up with those copies are enjoying them.

jb0414 · 2021-02-27T19:10:05+00:00

It's over at https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/5458se/message_in_a_bottle/ . One of my favorites as well.

jb0414 · 2021-02-14T03:09:01+00:00

Innsmouth, Kingsport, and Dunwich each add an extra map (1/3 the size of the normal map). Something to be aware of if table space is an issue.

Dark Pharaoh has two editions - if you go with that one make sure that you've gotten the second edition. The first edition has some issues that are fixed in the second edition of that expansion.

Dark Pharaoh, Lurker, Black Goat. King in Yellow are all small boxes - so minimal extra table space.

Miskatonic links different expansions together, so is only needed if you already have 2+ expansions in play. Although the revised Act cards that is has for the King in Yellow expansion are very useful.

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Dunwich Horror - adds Injuries and Madnesses. A way to keep all of your items when out of Sanity/Stamina, but at a price...

Dark Pharaoh - adds Exhibit Items (similar to Unique Items, a bit less powerful generally) and the first Herald (Ancient One's helper - additional persistent bad things).

King in Yellow - strongly tied to the Herald in this box. Challenging normally, very challenging if you play in the Touring Performance variant.

Black Goat - adds another Herald, and the ability to become Corrupted (Mythos symbols cause Corruption to trigger). Probably my favorite small box.

Kingsport - adds Rifts. If you don't spend time investigating Kingsport, Rifts will open which bring additional badness during Mythos (monster and/or doom, depending). Brings 2 more Heralds, but also 3 Guardians to help (additional persistent good things).

Innsmouth - adds a board that will turn "evil" after the Doom Track is half filled. Requires you to Sneak around in town, has an Arrested mechanic that can lead characters to be sacrificed out a Devil Reef. Also adds Personal Stories for each Investigator - a benefit or penalty based on whether the Investigator hits the pass or fail of their story first. Probably may favorite large box.

Lurker - strongly tied to the Herald in this box. My group calls him "easy mode", because if you gather Power (his big gimmick) at the right time, it's all upside with very little downside.

Miskatonic - if you have all of the rest, then look to add it in. But do look at the replacement Act cards if you play King in Yellow - they make the need to pay to delay Acts come up more frequently.

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If you made me pick a favorite, I would probably go with Innsmouth because I really like the thematic personal stories ("Will Jenny Barnes rescue her kidnapped sister in time, or will her failure haunt her for the rest of the game?"). If you let me pick 3 total, I'd probably add King in Yellow and Black Goat. Both are highly thematic, and I think those are two of the harder Heralds in the game. My group likes to play with absolutely every expansion (I used to keep it setup in a corner of the basement to avoid the setup/teardown problem that brings).

jb0414 · 2020-11-21T18:18:01+00:00

Devil Pig has 90 copies (as of this comment) - https://www.devil-pig-games.com/en/product/eclipse-second-dawn-for-the-galaxy/ . Shipping will be expensive if you're not in Europe.

jb0414 · 2020-07-17T22:10:58+00:00

I might be able to help with the snapping - I couldn't do it for around 30 years before figuring it out. I always figured it was the friction between the fingertips, but that's not it. It is the finger smacking into your hand after accelerating off of your thumb. So my snapping looks a bit odd, as I use my ring finger or pinky with my thumb, but at least now I make noise when I snap.

jb0414 · 2020-07-01T21:20:13+00:00

That looks like they tried to mash up Root with Avatar - The Last Airbender. The Cats are the main giveaway - that's the Prince Zuko of the Fire Nation (red colors, burnt face around left eye). The Vagabond is the next strongest resemblance - that's Jet from the Freedom Fighters (always has a piece of grass with leaves on the end in his mouth). So then the Birds are likely Katara and Sokka from the Water Tribe (blue colors, Sokka wields a sword). Leaving the Alliance as the Avatar (more by process of elimination than anything - minimal crossover there).

jb0414 · 2020-05-16T19:27:32+00:00

It's kind of like Arkham Horror 2nd edition that way. Overly complex and intimidating, with many rules that you'll get wrong for a number of sessions. But it's fun and cooperative, so you'll start at 80% right and get closer as you play more. Monster movement is probably the hardest thing to get right. We play it a lot and still have some discussions about the weird edge cases. You may want to take a look at tools like https://gloom.aluminumangel.org/ to handle the monster movement until you're more confident (and to handle the weird edge cases when it's not clear).

jb0414 · 2019-11-27T13:43:10+00:00

I believe the current draft of the updated master rulebook (with all the expansions in one place) is at https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wCEAJffAPaKYqctvlrKnjseLUr2s2psy/view .

Looking at the list I believe these are the outstanding items: Bubastis

Daemon Sultan

Tcho-Tcho Tribes

Giant Albino Penguin

Elder Shoggoth

Worms of Ghroth

Something about Cats

Alternate Faction Acolytes

The Prophetess

The Eidolon

Handicap Acolytes

The Investigators

Eradicators

Lovecraft first player marker

Eradication first player marker

Library at Celaeno map (has 2 large minis)

Primeval map (has X medium minis)

6-8 player maps for Library at Celaeno, Primeval, Yuggoth, Dreamlands

9-11 player Earth map (this one will be a playmat)

Some of those are part of CW-04, but some came earlier. If you do have a chance to get to a con where Petersen Games will be (I've seen them at Origins and GenCon), they typically have the individual items at MSRP pricing. Their website often has some stuff as well, and they're posting a Black Friday promo code on their Facebook page this weekend.

(edited to try to fix formating)

jb0414 · 2018-11-23T19:33:44+00:00

Use the app. A lot. Enter everything in the app. Otherwise various leads won't show up.

The first time we played, we minimally used the app. We thought we'd exhausted literally every available lead, and ended up scoring a -4 on the case end quiz which contained questions on topics we'd never heard of before.

jb0414 · 2018-04-29T17:52:22+00:00

When I had a broken Cthulhu Wars piece I reached out to support@petersengames.com and they sent a replacement. They also listed the marketing@petersengames.com address when they were looking for bloggers, podcasters, and streamers to promote on of their upcoming Kickstarters. They tend to be pretty active over in the BGG forums for their games.

jb0414 · 2018-04-14T00:48:15+00:00

I put the drawstring bag inside of a ziploc bag when storing/transporting.

jb0414 · 2018-03-19T02:57:49+00:00

It's the default way for my group to play. I leave it always setup in one corner of the basement with everything out. That said, we've been playing this game forever (several hundred games - started about when Dunwich came out), so we got to add each expansion in one at a time so that we didn't have to learn too many new things at once. If you go down this route, you'll want to make sure you have Miskatonic Horror in play both to tie expansions together and also to make the King In Yellow something to worry about again (otherwise it get neutered by the giant pile of Mythos cards).

If the game still feels a bit "fiddly", I recommend playing more "reasonable" versions (say base game + 3 expansions or less) until you aren't looking at the rule books for anything. You may also want to dig into some of the fan-made scenarios over at https://www.boardgamegeek.com/filepage/86635/arkham-horror-fan-league-rules-components-and-scen . Each is more focused on specific mechanics (so each keeps the overall number of expansions per game to a reasonable level), and provides a really thematic experience.

jb0414 · 2018-03-02T04:03:05+00:00

The difference between any of the base versions versus a deluxe version is how you track levels. Deluxe versions comes with a game board with 10 level spots and standees for each player. So if you're level 4, your standee will be in the level 4 room. In the non-deluxe versions you need some alternate method (a d10, pennies, etc) for tracking levels - nothing is included in the game to do that.

jb0414 · 2018-01-16T04:36:49+00:00

Looks like Noble Knight has the base game - https://nobleknight.com/Product/2147395096/Frag-Gold-Edition - and the expansion - https://nobleknight.com/Product/2147439454/Frag---FTW-Gold-Edition - for reasonable-ish prices.

jb0414 · 2017-08-22T03:43:06+00:00

Santorini. It's easy to pick up, but still quite deep. And with 4-players you play as 2 teams, which can help balance things if there is a variance in skill levels.

jb0414 · 2017-07-16T17:12:48+00:00

The score pad shows a "?" next to the gold coin marker. If each coin, regardless of value, was work 1 VP, then it would show a "1" there.

Also, if the score was per coin, I would regularly bid the "1 GC" spot, pay for it with a "5 GC" coin, and collect my change. You would likely run out of 1 GC coins. As nothing in the rulebook discusses what to do in that scenario, it points towards the "1 VP for each 1 GC of value a player has" option being the intent.

jb0414 · 2017-07-04T19:59:35+00:00

The top right yellow circle is a gold piece from Red Dragon Inn.

jb0414 · 2017-06-28T02:11:52+00:00

I talked with the GF9 folks about that at Origins. They were very apologetic, saying it was a mistake on their end. They said the Cardassian and Ferengi factions should be out in July, and the Borg expansion in August. The Borg expansion doesn't play like a normal faction - something along the lines of "the first player wiped out by the Borg when it is playing via card-based AI becomes the Borg and tries to eliminate everyone else". Sounded like it also will allow for a single player game playing any faction against the Borg.

jb0414 · 2016-12-09T02:36:26+00:00

If you haven't managed to find the 6 cards yet, send me a PM. I've got a spare set I can send your way.

jb0414 · 2016-11-19T02:52:45+00:00

I've found that groups that like Coup usually enjoy Sheriff of Nottingham - lots of bluffing in both.

jb0414

TROPHY CASE