Today’s episode of Save Vs. Rant is about bad house rules – non-canonical rules introduced to a game by a well-meaning group that end up making the game worse.
Episode 20 – Touchstones of Board Gaming
The focus of today’s episode is how to ease newcomers to the tabletop board gaming hobby. When the average person thinks of “board games” and “card games,” they tend to think of the family game night games that everyone remembers with varying degrees of fondness (often completely unrelated to how enjoyable the games themselves were). Relating games back to these familiar touchstones makes it substantially easier to introduce newcomers to the hobby.
Episode 19 – Complexity Creep
Today’s episode is about complexity creep, of which the making of this episode was an example. When we set out to do this episode, we planned to go over only a few specific examples, but the subject proved much richer than initially expected.
Episode 18 – Sentinels of the Multiverse
Today, we talk about Sentinels of the Multiverse by Greater Than Games, one of our favorite co-op card game experiences!
Episode 17 – Old Vs. New RPGs
Design philosophy changes with time. You can see this in advertising, in clothing style, in food (consider the truly incredible inedible Jell-O nightmares of the 1950’s) and, most pertinent to this podcast and its blog, in gaming. In today’s Save Vs. Rant, we’re going to break down the differences between the Old School and New School approach to RPG gameplay and design.
Episode 16 – Getting Serious About Casual Games
Today on Save Vs. Rant, we want to discuss something that will hopefully be valuable information with all the upcoming (and ongoing) gift-giving holidays: casual games. Casual games are not only a huge part of the story of tabletop gaming, but an awesome way to introduce people to the hobby!
Continue reading “Episode 16 – Getting Serious About Casual Games”
Episode 15 – Eight Flavors of Fun
On today’s episode of Save Vs. Rant, we delve into the theory of fun itself. What makes things fun? How can we understand fun on a deeper level? Why are two completely different things both enjoyable even though they may share virtually nothing in common? Find out, when we discuss Eight Flavors of Fun!
Game designer Marc LeBlanc previously had a website at www.8kindsoffun.com, which seems to be down at the time of this writing. This is a shame because it had a lot of good information. You can still find a snapshot of it on the Internet Archive.
Episode 14 – Mary Sue and Pants
Today’s episode is about two examples of poor characterization: the Mary Sue and Pants. Mary Sue being a reference to a very old Star Trek parody fanfiction, and Pants being a reference to the Oatmeal’s less than flattering review of the Twilight series.
Spoilers start at 09:05 and continue to 10:59 for Curse of Strahd, and 10:59 to 12:45 for (minor) Wrath of the Righteous spoilers!
Episode 13 – Seafall
Today’s episode is all about the game SeaFall, a 4x inspired Legacy game by the ingenious designer Rob Daviua. Despite the fact that Daviua is a living legend, we at SVR do not recommend SeaFall. It is our opinion that the game has too many flaws to provide a game experience we feel is up to the standards to which one should reasonably be able to hold someone largely responsible for the #1 rated game on BoardGameGeek.com.
Since this is a Legacy game played as an unfolding campaign THIS ENTIRE EPISODE IS A SPOILER. If you intend to play SeaFall at some point, DO NOT LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE.
Having said that, the remainder of this blog post is safe and will not contain spoilers about Seafall.
Episode 12 – Lore
Today at Save Vs. Rant, the story’s the thing as we discuss lore, and why it’s important even in everyday board games. Every game can have a story, whether that story is just an excuse for a game, or the game is just an excuse for a story.