Hexplore It's unique mix of dragons, dry erase markers, math, and maps that matter

Sounds like a veritable Hexplosion.

Yes, that’s a great way to put it! The tactile nature of boardgaming is already part of the appeal, and the act of writing just furthers that, doesn’t it?

Welp, thanks, jerkwad, for costing me a whole buncha Euros, which is even more in dollars.

Wait, you’re pulling my leg and trying to trick me into using permanent markers. Don’t think I won’t fall for it! To be honest, I don’t think I ever knew there was a such thing as “wet” erase markers.

I can get around the dry erase fiddliness with a careful table layout. But I’m not sure I could be bothered with having to use a wet sponge. I’m too attached to the pencil idea of just flipping around the writing instrument when I need to erase something. But now I have to go investigate this whole “wet” erase thing…

-Tom

I came in this thread thinking about that game

I think the place you’re most likely to have seen them, assuming you’re of a certain age, is with overhead projectors. But I quite like them: you get a finer line than dry erase, and you can wipe off a tick-mark or something with just a bit of rubbing, it’s only when you go to erase whole words or the like that you really need to get it wet.

Your other option is grease pencils, if you want a more pencil-like experience. They can be rubbed off dry, but you have to mean it: it takes a bit of pressure on the writing, they won’t brush away like dry erase. (If you want that real #2 pencil experience, you could probably wrap a bit of stiff foam around the back and tape a scrap of cloth over it, even.)

…Why yes, I have made a disturbingly in-depth study of uncommon office supplies for gaming purposes. Kind of you to notice.

Protip: when you accidentally or stupidly write on a dry erase board with a wet erase marker, don’t fret. You can erase wet erase marker marks by writing over those marks with a dry erase marker. Then rub both marks off with your thumb or a paper towel or whatever.

Does this game plan on adding Hexploitation, Hexperimentation, and Hextermination? I love a good 4-Hex game, even without Hexpansion packs.

This game sounds absurdly excellent and is really tickling the part of my brain that is desperate to run a traditional “Hexcrawl”-style RPG campaign (see here, albeit briefly) but also knows that I literally do not have the time to do so right now.

Something about that feeling of randomly generated (via combinations of race and class and items in the very traditional OD&D sense) characters exploring a randomly generated world full of table-derived encounters and cities and mysteries and magic just thrills me as a Gamemaster, because I live for the improvisational challenge of finding a way to tie that all together into a narrative for my players and to craft the chance interplay of numbers and stats and tables into a living world that breathes and shifts and matters.

The idea of packaging something very much like that experience into a compact, time-delimited boardgame is. . . erm. . . rather exciting for me, personally. Going to see if I can’t tempt one of my boardgame-focused friends into buying it so I don’t have to and step one step closer to needing to buy a dedicated shelving unit for boardgames. …

The game is called Hexplore It, right?

Correct. Hexplore It: Valley of the Dead King if you want to get technical.

https://www.amazon.com/HEXplore-Valley-Dead-King-Board/dp/B078589RQX/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1523375013&sr=8-1&keywords=hexplore+it+board+game

They’re currently running a Kickstarter for the next game, Hexplore It: Forest of Adrimon, which is at least a year away.

-Tom

So is the $120 price the standard price for the box? I saw that the Kickstarter page for it listed a $60 base “get the game” tier when it was going on. Is this going to be published for that price or am I paying double no matter what? It seems like something my kids and I would enjoy but too risky at $120.

It definitely shouldn’t be $120, because it only comes with two minis! :)

Seems like that’s just some sort of price gouging third-party selling through Amazon. You might be able to find it for closer to the $60 base price if you look around. The Kickstarter version has a handful of exclusive races, but you’re not missing too much without them.

Also, I know you guys are Patreon supporters. I’m giving away a new shrink-wrapped copy this weekend through Patreon this weekend. You might want to hold off until then.

-Tom

:-O

I will definitely keep an eye out for that! Luckily your giveaway will come before the Kickstarter for the sequel game concludes. . .

Adjusts monocle… I will enter your fine contest, my good man!

Actually, per the sequel Kickstarter page, both games are intended to retail for around 90 and 60 is a special Kickstarter discount price. 120 is still gouging, though.

Yeah, well, this is one of these weird things where there’s a supposed retail price, but no real retail run (all orders were through their Kickstarter, afaik), so the $60 vs. $90 is marketing more than anything else. What they are really saying is had this game been distributed via retail it would have cost $90 aprox.

The game was sold for $60. $52 if you bought 5 copies. And everything else is a reselling market.

I got on the preorders for $60 just about a day before it closed, so I was lucky. I have yet to play it, though. Might get on the sequel, but if so I will do a late pledge like I did with this one, I think.

Any particular reason no one wanted to publish it and put it on shelves?

It’s hard to say if they even tried for that. But if they did, I mean, it’s got a ton of stuff for not that much money (so might be undercosted for the market, Gloomhaven certainly was), arguably has niche appeal (hexy, mathy, virtually no minis in a genre stuffed with minis), and the dry erase thing is kinda weird.

In general, boardgames don’t need the kind of development money videogames do, so if you can raise production costs on Kickstarter and figure out a relationship with a manufacturer there’s no inherent need to sign on with a publisher, and Kickstarter is about as much marketing as you need to get copies to people on Kickstarter. So the question is whether you care about a wider retail presence or even would sell at retail, and I suspect for a lot of these games there’s not a ton of reason to.

I guess so… it just makes these things a collector’s item before they even are known to the majority of people who might be interested IMO. I guess it’s great if you’re in the club, and kinda crummy if you’re not.

People moan about Steam discovery, but these boardgames are a total crapshoot.

I think sometimes that’s by design. Gets people hyped to get in on your Kickstarter, and satiates the jerks who feel like other people having access to something they have harms them somehow (there’s a distressingly large amount of that mentality on these projects, I’ve found). I definitely miss a lot of stuff I might be interested in, though, and I’m checking Kickstarter threads multiple places on the regular. Like I guess Spirit Island was Kickstarted? I had no idea it even existed until Tom got all excited about it.

The flipside, mind you, is that a lot of the games that aren’t going to see retail end up having reprint Kickstarters (Gloomhaven, 7th Continent, etc), expansion Kickstarters, or similar (like Hexplore It). And those, if the game is any good, tend to have much stronger word of mouth and you can make a much more informed buying decision with much better expectation of actually getting what you paid for.

And it’s not like it’s hard to miss stuff in the regular retail market. Games seem to go out of print all the time, and while the bigger publishers will usually do new printings, that can take a while…

Never have truer words been written, Dave. It’s way too easy to get caught up in a Kickstarter campaign or a cool description, only to discover the game was made by someone who had no idea what he was doing.

-Tom

true, owner of a Dark Souls kickstarter copy (at least the minis are ok)