@JoshL, it just occurred to me, Plaid Hat kicked off a series of storybook campaign games with a very kid-friendly Toy Story style adventure. Like Near and Far, it takes place in a book that you lay open on the table. Each character is a stuffed animal, and the game is a series of simple tactical battles representing a little girl’s dreams. The stuffed animals have to protect her from scary stuff. In fact, the fail state is the little girl not getting a good night’s sleep. It’s very co-op, very narrative based, and it’s designed to appeal to the thrill of discovery.
Take a look at that BGG entry and if it looks like something you guys might like, I’ll gladly send you my copy. Plaid Hat has since made a less kid-oriented iteration about exploring the mind of a coma patient. And if that doesn’t put you in mind of Psychonauts enough, it’s called Comanauts. And if you still don’t get the connection, they even use the Psychonauts font for the title. But it’s pretty much obsoleted Stuffed Fables, which I’m happy to pass along to folks who might appreciate it.
I’m feeling wicked ashamed. I’m going to poll a number of nerds around me in my day to day life and see if they know… if they do… I’ll turn in my geek card for 7 days while I brush up on my historic nerd vernacular. (which I’m really pissed at the fact it has weakened)
edit… card revoked for 7 days for sci fi training :(
Jerry Hawthorne is kind of notorious for kicking these “series” off and then utterly ignoring them. Mice & Mystics petered out. Tail Feathers was the bones of what could have been a great campaign system, and promised expansions and new content in the rulebook, but nothing ever came of it. I wouldn’t hold my breath for anything more after Stuffed Fables.
I’m normally just a bag and band guy and tend to dump stuff into bowls when playing games, but there are so many different kinds of bits in Spirit Island that setup and takedown were starting to make me not want to pull it out. (I tossed the inserts it came with both because that’s what I usually do and because they arrived crushed inside the box.) So I ordered the TowerRex organizer for Spirit Island. It shipped from the Ukraine, so took about 3 weeks to arrive, but I am quite impressed with its quality and utility.
This organizer costs $10 (plus ~$12 shipping) and works really well. The wooden pieces are precision laser cut and fit together just tightly enough that they don’t require glue, but not so tightly that you need a hammer. I was able to assemble it in about 25 minutes using just what came in the package. It’s not a single insert, but a series of divided trays that can be removed from the box and placed near the gameplay area to facilitate play.
It packs neatly into the box, with enough room for the Branch and Claw expansion and the two promo spirits (currently back in stock BTW) with no lid lift. The card organizer can fit all of the cards sleeved (though mine aren’t.) The token trays are marked on the floor of each section with the kind of token they’re meant to hold.
I played a session with my son last night using the organizer. It was very quick to set up (<10 minutes) and take down (<5 minutes) and it was nice to have the tokens and pieces organized near the playing area. My only minor qualm is I like to remove extra blight back to the box so I don’t inadvertently add it from the supply, and this setup doesn’t really permit that, but there are probably workarounds.
For about $22, this thing is a no brainer. TowerRex offers a bunch of other organizers on Esty as well, including one for Gloomhaven that lists for $47…
Hahaha. In your defense, as soon as I typed that, I thought to myself ‘huh, I haven’t said or seen that that in years’. Once upon a time, people said it a lot. I’m old, now.
@Matt_W: maybe Mice & Mystics is more fun than it looks… it’s just seems like all you do is fight monsters, then go to the next room and fight more monsters. The only theme comes from the ability cards. I guess there is a story book, but do the scenarios refer back to it, or is it just for setup?
@ducker: she likes Forbidden {Island/Desert/Sky}, One Deck Dungeon, My Little Scythe, Quest for El Dorado, lots of stuff!
@sillhouette: We have Magic Maze! That’s a great game to play with kids (I would never play it with adults though). Gotta get that back to the table.
@Don_Quixote: Near and Far looks great! I’d seen the box, but I had no idea that’s what kind of game it was. I guess because Above & Below is a worker placement game, I assumed that’s what this was. Do the stories end up being coherent, or is it just a bunch of disconnected episodes?
@tomchick: Stuffed Fables looks good too! Let me ask the kiddos and I’ll PM you.
Well it’s a skirmish-based dungeon crawler, so that is the core game loop, but it’s more than that. The skirmishes are interesting and fun. You’ll have to scurry up a mop handle to fight some zombie rats on a tabletop while your compatriots on the floor are scooting around trying to avoid being pounced on by the cat. Or you might be fighting a running battle while being swept downstream in a sewer.
And yeah, the scenarios refer back to the book quite a bit. There are decision points and story moments when you reach certain tiles, and special rules for a bunch of them as well.
I have the game plus both expansions. I’d be willing to give them up for shipping (which might be a bit; these games are filled with stuff.) They’re pretty well used, but still very playable.
The individual character-specific stories are connected, of course. Some are longer than others.
The longer ‘generic’ campaign quests are mostly one-off, with two exceptions. First, some quests trigger a ‘side quest’, that they read instead of whatever random quest they would next encounter the next time they encounter a quest. The other is some quests reward you with a Keyword, that you write down on your sheet, and it my come into play in the future as a choice during an encounter. The two map-specific scenarios in the expansion are all heavily connected- one concerns an election in the main city on the map- finding candidates and helping them get elected, the other digging up an ancient railway.
Long posts! But this stuff is all relatively fresh in my mind- I just reacquainted myself with it since I’m going on a road trip down to a ‘secluded’ hotel on the Oregon coast on a few weeks with my gal, and this might be a fun was to pass the time.
Josh, make sure to circle back on what you picked and how they like it!! I’m REALLY curious if you pick up Near and Far for them - as I’m super intrigued in it now…
I think there’s a broader narrative arc to Near and Far’s campaign but most stories so far seem to be one off beats based on the area you’re in with some recurring themes and characters. There have been a couple of encounter chains already though.
Oh, yeah, there is a broad narrative, for sure. Whether you play the generic or character-driven campaigns, you’re all essentially pilgrims/treasure hunters of a sort, looking for a place called The Last Ruin, that contains an artifact that can grant you your heart’s desire. So lost loves, redemption, acceptance, etc. are what you’re looking for, not necessarily riches or power.
I just got Stuffed Fables for my son’s birthday after a similar search as yours. He played the D&D Adventure games (but not Candlekeep) but didn’t engage with it. I have Gloomhaven and might try it with him at some point. The other options people mentioned above all make sense.
But, not to be that guy, have you considered playing a actual RPG? There’s loads of interedting games in different styles these days, and even D&D is good now. My son is incredibly excited to play my D&D campaign. It has a lot of advantages over a board game, the players can get involved in the creative process, and you can dynamically change the tone and style of the game to react to their preferences.
@Matt_W: Thanks for the offer! I will quiz the kiddos and PM you too!
@Richard_Holt: I just can’t play pen-n-paper RPGs anymore. I have friends that do. I do wonder if there is a kid-friendly RPG group I can get her into. However, she can be a bit of a handful.
Have you had a chance to play Comanauts? I keep looking at this game at the store (along with Gen 7) and think it would be cool to have a cooperative story telling game. I also thought about getting Stuffed Fables to play with the kids. Just wondering if Comanauts is good.
God do I miss every apartment building have a rooftop jaccuzzi when I lived in LA. Being able to play boardgames out on the roof under the sun in winter.
