Table Top: 3 Games for Episode 3!

 Board Games, Reviews, Table Top, Web Shows, Zombies  No Responses »
May 102012
 


The most recent episode of Table Top was an intriguing one for they departed from the standard format of playing a large box game in favor of playing through three quick but different games. Tsuro, Zombie Dice, and Get Bit.

Tsuro is a tile laying game whereby players create paths on a game board which their Dragon Stones follow. The more tiles that are laid the more difficult it becomes to keep the paths from leading the stones off the edge of the board so the challenge is to become the last player remaining.

Zombie Dice is, as the name suggests, a dice game where players take on the role of brain munching zombies. The dice represent The Living whom the Zombies are chasing and rolling the dice determines whether that particular surviving human gets their brains eaten, shoots the zombie in the face, or manages to temporarily run away.

Get Bit is a simple yet devious game where the objective isn’t just avoiding getting eaten by the Shark, but more about letting your friends get eaten. You play one of several (apparently waterproof) robots swimming in the ocean when a shark starts chasing all of you. You play cards to see who is outswimming whom and the slowest robot loses a limb as it gets chomped by the cusinart-like jaws of a shark with an apparent iron deficiency.

Watch the Full Episode Here!

For me I found this episode truly delightful. Each of the games were delightful little gems, though your mileage may vary in regards to which one you enjoy most. I personally favored Tsuro so perhaps I am biased towards the episode because I felt it started off with the game that caught my attention most. The demos of the three games were timed very well and gave the pacing of the entire episode a very good feel.

But of course the entertainment value of the episode would be nothing without Wil Wheaton’s guests! This week we were treated to the likes of Ryan Higa, Rod Roddenberry, and Freddie Wong.

Continue reading for the extended TableTop Interviews.

The Game Crafter

 Board Games  No Responses »
Apr 182012
 

Here’s a query for you:
Have you ever thought you could design a better card game? Have you ever wondered if an RPG would work better with a different system? Have you created “House Rules” when playing board games?

To ask it bluntly, have you ever wanted to just make your own game?

In the past when I’ve been feeling creative I’ve basically been limited to going to the store, buying some index cards, writing on them, and hobbling together tokens, dice, and other odds & ends to create my own vision of a game.

This is totally fine for most of us, but if we ever wanted to take the process another step forward we were essentially blocked by the limitations of what home technology can produce; and if we consider actually getting our game printed professionally we find ourselves stymied by the costs of having to produce hundreds or thousands at once from a professional printer for cards and boards, and that doesn’t even include the cost of tracking down quality non-printed parts.

Then a few years ago there came along a small business with an ambitious plan. Some folks saw a niche were there was demand for Print-On-Demand games, and they decided to try to fill it. The result was The Game Crafter.


The premise is simple. You create the artwork and documents, and they’ll do the printing and assembling and provide the webstore for the sales. The maintain a warehouse of commonly used parts in eight standard colors, and do all of the printing on demand. This way, nothing has to be assembled and paid for prior to a sale actually coming in for a game. When someone buys your game that’s when The Game Crafter pulls the parts from their warehouse, prints out the cards and/or board, puts them all together in a nice box, and ships it out.

They can provide:
~ Completely Custom Printed decks of cards including ones that can have rarity assigned to the cards like real Trading Card Game decks.
~ Folding Printed Chipboards for custom Board Games.
~ Custom designed Playing Mats
~ Tokens with custom printed stickers
~ Wide variety of playing pieces from typical to pawns, to buildings, to vehicles, to resources, to a variety of pieces used in popular German Style Board Games.
~ and more.

So if you’ve ever considered making your own board or card game, I highly recommend giving their site a look see. I’ve used them myself in the past, and I can pass a grade of “A” on the quality of the printed cards and chip-boards.

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