Game Chef - Trying out some games

Last night we had a meetup for our local game meetup group, the Toronto Area Gamers, and had a lot of fun playing 44: A Game of Automatic Fear. It was my first time running it and as such it ended a bit early. Oh, I turned them all into alien pod people, but what happened is that we ended the game way too early. Now that I have some experience running the game, I know how I can make the game last a little longer, with allowing the action to happen rather than just jumping to the conflict point. Still, it was an awesome time.

That being said we ended about a third of our way through the alotted time. That wasn't particularly cool for those who came to play, so I took out the game chef games, which happen to be in the same binder with me, and we decided on a couple that we'd like to try.

1. Danger Mountain

I still love the idea behind this game. The whole concept of building up a town, and the relationships that make the crisis immediate and pressing is great.

What I think would help the game would be a moment where you could foreshadow your disaster without trying to do it in the scene. It felt a little artificial and since we had a couple of new players they were really pushing for their disaster and so the opening scene was really:

"Did you hear about my disaster?" "No, did you hear about my disaster?"

What might help that is having a brief moment where you could mention your disaster. Just that quick cut away to the lava bubbling in the volcano, or the grasshoppers coming down the road.

We also spent all our time on the questions on the cards rather than any of the other options.

We didn't finish the game because two of the people we were playing with didn't play a lot of co-operative storytelling games and so they were feeling confused. One of the players even excused himself at that point, which made me feel a little bad. I wasn't trying to be exclusive. I do think that anyone can play any game really.

Anyway, we decided to play another game ...

2. Chronicles of Skin.

I could make emblems for hours. Seriously, I had such a good time with that I almost asked to do it again instead of playing the game.

However, we did get down to playing at least one round of the game. What I think might be cool was what ron suggested. Instead of coming up with the conflict ad you go, draw it out first and then interpret it and finish it when its done.

That is what we did last night.

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