Nice find, thank you!
If you’re a big fan of Talisman, all their DLC is 10-50% off. I’m not, but someone must be buying all that stuff.
I did avail myself of a few TTS DLC since it’s all 50% off. Got Dawn of the Zeds, Scythe, and Wingspan.
Does TTS implement rules logic and enforcement for each game module or do you just move the pieces around freely and need to know the rules or keep them open on a second device?
Probably a dumb question but I haven’t followed TTS at all.
You need to know the rules and how to play. Automation of the setup and some of the mechanics are possible, but no TTS mod that I know of enforces rules.
Thanks, that was my assumption, but wasn’t sure.
Is that even legal? They basically copied the Eldritch Horror board game by FFG.
It’s really shameless, isn’t it? But…they appear to have scraped off FFG IP, board game mechanics are not copyrightable, and Lovecraft (and many related Mythos works) is out of copyright. So it might be legal.
Yeah, I’ve always understood that game rules are not copyrightable, but if you’re going to clone a game owned by a company like Asmodee or Games Workshop or Wizards of the Coast you should set aside some of your profits to defend a lawsuit anyway.
Race never did it for me, for some reason, but I picked up Roll this weekend because of the sale and am really enjoying it
Why do you like Roll better than Race? I never enjoyed Race mainly due to having to go to school and memorize all the icons. Hard to play it here and there because I could never remember everything.
That’s a big part of it, because the tiles in Roll also contain text that tells you what the icons mean. In fact, I saw a review before I picked it up that called Roll a gateway into Race.
The other game I always struggled with due to iconography issues was Seven Wonders. I never enjoyed playing the game because I would be lost.
Does the Race for the Galaxy app display all the icon definitions to make it easier to learn?
I tried playing the Wingspan app but returned it. I found it hard to follow because you do not really get to see what the opposition (AI) is doing. I thought if I could easily watch the AI play I would learn how to be a decent player. As far as I could tell it was hard to really watch in a meaningful way.
(TIME WARP - after I wrote this, I did a quick search and found the article linked below SO what I wrote may not be accurate but I’m leaving it here regardless AND including the article link)
I’m certainly no IP attorney, but I think some of these issues were addressed head-on with scrabble “copies” in the Apple Store. I think the basic gameplay is NOT exclusive, but the actual board is
I think this explains why the gameboard in Words with Friends is different than the actual Scrabble board, whereas the gameplay is the same.
How that specifically relates here - who really knows? :)
https://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2008/07/scrabulous-sc-1.html
Mechanics are not copyrightable because they are “ideas”, however, specific expressions of those ideas are.
So you can copyright a “make points making words” game, but stuff like the board composition and even points values for different letters or number of copies of each letter in the mix can be (it all would need to be decided in a court, ofc).
For Eldritch horror, cards with the same effects in exactly the same deck compositions, a board with the same geography, etc would be hard to defend, I think, if pressed to court.
I like Race a lot. Tried the Roll beta and bounced off it really hard.
I’m still the opposite of that- I really dislike Race (for most of the above reasons), but I enjoy Roll on BGA when we need a filler. It’s a decent little game.
I am likely going to continue to waffle on this, but for now I doubt I am going to get Fury of Dracula. It’s one of my favorite games, but for me the best part is the table dynamics. Watching the players debate over where Dracula is, the bluffing, etc. are a large part of the fun. I don’t see how that translates to digital.
Huh, I just realized that the omens on the gates do not match what they are in the game. Tokyo, Shanghai, and Rome were all blue while London was red (London and Tokyo are blue in the table game, the others are red). Are they randomized each session? Is this a feature from picking “normal” difficulty over “easy”? It seems bizarre in a game that’s otherwise a 100% exact copy of the tabletop.
There’s also a couple mechanical hangups. When you have reroll options, you’re presented one option at a time and cannot go back. So you’ll be offered to use Norman’s “spend a sanity instead of a clue” reroll first, THEN focus, then actual clues. But if you wanted to use a focus first before you considered the sanity option, tough luck you can’t. We also ran into a bug where the same Norman ability did not trigger for Azathoth’s Omen of Destruction mystery “When you close a gate of the current omen, may spend 1 clue to advance mystery”.
The randomized(?) gate omen thing really threw us though. Having FOUR out of five of the first gates spawned all be blue? yeesh