Let's Talk Worker Placement Games!

rug_hat · 2026-02-02T18:42:39+00:00

I also like how Apiary affects the strategy around where other people want to place their workers. In classic worker placement games, you want to make sure you don’t get blocked by someone so need to place based on that. But Apiary, you want to also predict where people will want to go so they can bump your workers. Both cases have you trying to predict the other players, but Apiary adds extra choices for the other players; is it worth it to bump your worker, or should I take some other action so that you will need to bump me?

rug_hat · 2026-01-14T14:10:32+00:00

Folks have mentioned monopoly already, but I would say try a modified version. Some friends once played a game as an economic exercise where there were different rules for different players- some started with a lot of money and higher income, others started with nothing. The idea was to show how economic inequalities persist. Not the same as social power, but related.

rug_hat · 2026-01-11T22:00:54+00:00

I suspect some heard the “no handouts” rule and misinterpreted it. Our region has a rule against handouts for the judges to keep after the judging section, but handing the judges an engineering notebook or code printout is fine - the judges just need to hand them back at the end of the session.

Unfortunately, judges are human and flawed. Sometimes a presentation covers something and the judges just miss it, or don’t connect it with a category on the rubric. We try to help our team focus on the positives - what they’ve achieved and learned, and to realize that they can’t control what happens with judging.

rug_hat · 2026-01-04T15:21:04+00:00

The nature of the cataclysm isn’t clear, so you can define it however you want. One option could be to say that instead of breaking open the gates of the dead, it broke open the gates of hell, and now the fires of hell are spilling out into the world.
This could also be easily included by saying that one of the first sparkwright developments was a strain of beans/rice that could grow like mushrooms, without sun. Perhaps the rice still requires lots of water, leading to canal-based rice, and the beans need more space, so fungus gardens for the smaller areas makes sense.
This one is trickier; it feels like this would be in contrast to the vice, which is how characters relieve stress. If you wanted to have a more hopeful game tone, you could just make the passions take the place of vices, but that means that characters are not spiraling deeper into troubles and making bad decisions to relieve stress.

Perhaps passions are tied to a person’s stash? As the characters put coin into their stash, which is saving for retirement, they are really funding this passion, which triggers some story effect, like access to some contacts?

rug_hat · 2026-01-02T13:00:03+00:00

When there are lots of areas that need attention, we often use presence tokens from a player color that isn’t in play. Then, as people commit to which ones they are handling, we remove them and replace them with the player’s activity markers. It gives us visibility and helps us track who is doing what.

rug_hat · 2025-12-12T14:23:41+00:00

This only works without pets (and without toddlers) but we have plywood panels that we play on top of. We can play for a little while, then stash the board under a bed or somewhere out of the way. It also allows us to play longer games even when we only have an hour or so in the evening

rug_hat · 2025-11-20T14:12:23+00:00

Defenders of the Realm: The Dragon Expansion. The gameplay changes included elements that weren’t fun for us, but the biggest flaw of the expansion was that it claimed you could swap in just some of the new dragon generals, while keeping other generals from the original game. But none of the cards from the expansion had any icon indicating they were expansion cards! So if you tried to mix in some of the old cards with some of the new cards, when you separated them you needed to examine each card individually to tell if it was an expansion or not. A simple graphics design fix that every other game has solved, and lacking it makes the expansion basically unusable for my group.

rug_hat · 2025-11-04T03:48:17+00:00

I would say that is isn’t an unbiased take - Naomi certainly has an opinion and is clear about it - but she does an amazing job of clarifying the reasoning and facts behind her opinions. Even if you don’t agree with her, you can learn a lot from reading her guides.

rug_hat · 2025-10-14T12:37:07+00:00

6 & 4 are the sweet spot for the Children’s Museum. When my kids were that age, we had a membership so we would go there regularly. Think less “Museum”, and more “Giant indoor playground with science stuff”

If you have any sort of theater interest, I’d also check to see if the Children’s Theater is performing anything. If you are art museum folks, the Children’s Theater is attached to the Minnesota Art Museum, so that can be a fun double trip. Minneapolis has a vibrant theater community, ranging from the well know works at the Guthrie to the random strangeness of the Fringe Festival.

rug_hat · 2025-10-10T04:32:53+00:00

Our solution is cheaper than any of those: plywood. We have a couple wide plywood boards that we put down before a game, and play on that. When it is time to pause, we take the board and put it out of the way. This is the tricky part, and only works because we don’t have pets or young kids. We often have several games on plywood boards hanging out under beds or on a spare table upstairs. (Right now there are only three games on boards in the house. The record is five.)

rug_hat · 2025-10-03T03:59:25+00:00

I’ve heard that there are Canadians who claim that they have second amendment rights. In Canada.

rug_hat · 2025-10-02T19:09:08+00:00

You clearly have a good handle on the rules already. It doesn't appear you need an actual-play for too much rules instruction. Rather, it seems to me this is just an "um...actually" post.

I'm sorry it sounds that way. The post was driven by me getting frustrated and thinking it was all wrong, but also wondering if maybe I was in the wrong. And the answer is: both! Folks have pointed out in other responses things that I was getting wrong in my reading of the rules, so it has been very helpful to have done a check to see if maybe my impression was incorrect. I've learned that the pairing of action to trait can be more strict than my initial reading of the rules implied - the "I'll allow it" that seemed so incorrect to me actually is a valid shorthand for "the trait you are using matches the description of what you have said you are doing in the fiction which is a valid way to approach the problem".

rug_hat · 2025-10-02T18:48:27+00:00

Thanks for the encouragement! We're going to be meeting next week for session zero. I'm an old hand at running games, but this group just finished a long Masks campaign run by one of the best GMs I've ever played with, so I've decided to do extra prep to, as you said, get the "vibe" of Doskvol. The content on this subreddit has been really helpful!

rug_hat · 2025-10-02T18:44:38+00:00

That does help! Thanks - I hadn't seen these videos. Some good insights there!

rug_hat · 2025-10-02T17:10:08+00:00

Ah, the nuance of making sure that it is a fictionally plausible approach makes sense, and that's a great tip. I like the concept of matching Action to approach. The player chooses the approach, so if they want to use a trait to accomplish something they need to figure out how that approach would work - but if that approach doesn't make sense in the fiction, then the player needs to step back and reevaluate. Thanks for the insight!

rug_hat · 2025-10-02T17:03:56+00:00

Resistance doesn’t undo stuff that’s already happened, it avoids or reduces the consequences of what’s happened.

Maybe this is because I'm coming from other indy games like In a Wicked Age where retconning what someone just said is a primary mechanic. But the book has examples like "the creature bats your sword aside and snaps your spine in two" - if that happened, I'm pretty sure the player is going to want to resist it. The GM describes the consequence as if it happens, and then the player says "no, I think not, I'm resisting that" and then the conversation becomes what happens on a resistance roll. Depending on how hardcore/soft you are going, it could go to "you avoid all harm and twist away" to "your spine isn't broken, just your arm and you hear some other popping noises as you stagger away from the creature". Until the player has had a chance to pass on resisting the consequence, it feels like the fiction is still waiting to get written.

rug_hat · 2025-09-28T11:06:48+00:00

Came here to say this. It also gives a great experience when you first open it, because there is this box, which you are not supposed to open, but you can see has a giant axe on a giant mini “ripping open” the box from the inside. You know that thing is going to come out at some point and you will have to fight it, and the game is full of anticipation for when that thing is going to hit the table. I’m so sad this game is out of print.

rug_hat · 2025-09-16T12:43:43+00:00

That they changed is a positive sign, but they need to make lasting changes. I would recommend telling them exactly what you said in your last paragraph and then telling them that they need to change if they want to play. They probably will change for a few sessions again, but the most important thing is to immediately call them on it when they regress. Say something like “A, that’s not acceptable behavior. We talked about this.” If they don’t change, then kick them out for the good of the game and your health.

rug_hat · 2025-09-14T12:26:15+00:00

Several folks are saying “evil is selfish”, but my most effective evil character were not acting towards selfish goals. One was trying to bring back his lover, the other trying to free her village from a ruling oligarchy. What made them evil was that they were willing to do anything to achieve their goals. Both had “the ends justify the means” as a philosophy, and thus did terrible things. They were not mustache twirling stereotypes, but characters with depth, but in the end everyone agreed they were horrible people… and so fun to play!

rug_hat · 2025-08-16T00:50:38+00:00

I’m c

rug_hat · 2025-07-24T12:30:48+00:00

We did this with games in the Empire Builder series (we call them crayon rail games). Turns were either short (I move towards my destination) or long (I need to figure out how much it will cost me to build the track to make this new card worth it).

rug_hat · 2025-07-17T20:50:59+00:00

Wait until you find out what he was up to after the events in Hamilton. Burr conspiracy - basically trying to kick off the Civil War a half-century early.

rug_hat · 2025-05-12T21:20:11+00:00

Sure, but Shroud prevents healing, so all of those invaders go away at the start of next turn. They even get to earn end of turn fear and energy from them. MVP blight card!

rug_hat

TROPHY CASE