Short Order Heroes can be used as a stand alone Light RPG / Story generator or a gaming aid.
The content of this project is simple, it is a deck of cards with an adjective and a number.
To create characters you draw three cards to get a collections of adjectives. NPC's you encounter while threading your tale get from three to one attributes. When the conflict arises in the tale, the DM and the Player discuss how the attributes of all the characters affect the conflict. So if your character is "Cute" and "Foolish" and you are trying to get past a guard who is "Clumsy" and "Romantic" you could try straight diplomacy which no adjective affects ( difficulty 4). You could try to leap past the guard who is clumsy (difficulty 3), or you could try to charm the romantic guard with your cuteness (difficulty 2). You determine the result of the conflict by drawing a new card and using the number. If the number is equal to or greater than the difficulty, the character "wins" the conflict. The adjective of the card adds flavor to how the action is actually performed. For instance if the player attempts to charm the guard and draws "Wise" with a 6, the player gets by the guard, perhaps by having a disarming conversation about philosophy or maybe just complimenting the guard on their wisdom.
The game looks like it will be a lot of fun for low key RPG activities. It can also of course be used with more traditional RPGs to add some quick flavor or to more open ended story telling games (like Tell Tale) to give it more direction.
Scrabble Slam. A fast paced game of word generation.
Description
Scrabble slam is an easy, low stakes game of word generation.
The only mechanic to the game is a deck of 55 cards. Each card has a wood like printing that makes it resemble the classic Scrabble letter tokens.
The difference between these cards and the tiles is that, excepting for the blank card, each card has a different letter on the front and back. The two letters are displayed in the top left and bottom right corners (see picture).
The Game
The game is very simple. All the players decide on a word, usually with four letters like "SLAM" but you can vary the length without changing the style of gameplay.
The remaining cards are then split equally between the players. When the game starts the players look through their hand of cards, either side, for a single letter which will change the word. For instance C could change SLAM to CLAM. The player calls out the new word and places down the card covering the old letter. Each play must change the spelling, that is to say, you cannot place an S on the S in SLAM, however you can reuses words. so you could go SLAM, CLAM, SLAM.
There are no turns, you just call out the word and place the card as fast as you can.
When you play a blank card you declare a letter and it is treated as that letter.
The first player to run out of cards wins the round. If nobody can play a card, then the person with the least cards wins the game.
Video Demo and Review
Strategy
First and foremost, know your words. That is pretty much the most important part of any word game of course. There is more to it than that though.
Try to get a good feel for the letters in your hand. Many players get hung up on finding the letter first, then declaring the new word, then playing the card. Players who have a better grasp of their cards can declare the new word first, then find the card, shaving off valuable seconds.
Sometimes two players will play a fast game all the way to the point that someone runs out. Much more common though is that people will burn through the easy letters quickly, then play will slow down considerably when people have a handful of difficult last letters and cannot figure out how to play them.
If this is the case with your game play, there are two very good strategies to try. First, if you know it is very likely that the game will slow down, then you may wish to prioritize expending difficult letters early in the game as you will have plenty of time to get rid of easy cards later later.
The second strategy is that if the game slows down, stop placing cards as fast as you find words. Plan out your moves as far as you can. Also, unless you agree not to in advance, look at your opponents cards. Make sure none of your plays would benefit your opponent more than you.
Take note that it is perfectly allowable to alternate back and forth between the same word: CLAM, PALM, CLAM, PALM, CLAM. So, if you find a run of valid letter pairs in your hand, you can get rid of these quite quickly.
For really serious players, in Scrabble, it is useful to memorize all the Q words and such. As you have two options for every card (except one card that strangely has A on both sides) this is less important. There is another word memorization strategy for Slam though.
In Slam words can change dramatically, but the location of vowels rarely changes, this is often the case because to move a vowel you must first remove one or add one then get rid of the existing one.
There are many four letter words with one vowel or two vowels, but there are only a handful with three vowels, and even fewer that can be derived from other four letter words.
This means that knowing the words with three vowels in a row is very useful. Here are a few :
AGON to AEON
BEAD/BEDU to BEAU
LIED/LIES/LIER/LIEN to LIEU
LULU to LUAU
MOTE/MOVE/MODE/MOKE/MOLE to MOUE
QUAD to QUAI
RAID/RAIL/RAGA to RAIA/RAYA
TOES/TOFU to TOEA
A few of these will even help you transition the locations of vowels in a word, which is infrequent in a game of Scrabble slam.
Variant for Balancing the Game
With the popularity of Scrabble and Words with Friends, and vocabulary skills in general being inconsistent from person to person, it helps to have a balancing mechanic to prevent the game breaking down when one person is consistently much better than everyone else in the game.
If you have a word fiend in your group then here is a simple, quick balancing strategy. At the end of a round of Scrabble Slam, find the person with the largest hand of cards remaining, this is very simple in a two person game. Take half of these cards and set them aside. Reshuffle the remaining cards and set up a new game as usual. Prior to starting the new round though, give the stack of cards set aside previously to the word fiend. They now have a larger set of cards they need to get rid of in order to win the round.
Younger kids
The minimum age for the game, as the rules stand is accurately at eight years. However this can be a really fun game to play with kids when you partner them with an adult and the player/teams take turns. This is really great at teaching spelling and introducing new words.
For kids in the pre-spelling phase these cards can double as letter flash cards.
Opinions
Simple rules, quick set up, quick game play, and sub $10 price range make this game a hit for parties, casual gaming, or for serious game nights, killing a few minutes while waiting for another game to get over. Bonus points for doubling as flash cards and a solitaire, personal challenge game.
The package it comes in quickly breaks down though, so if you want it to travel, I suggest getting a robust card case.
The random distribution of cards has little impact on a couples game but becomes a larger factor as you add players, thus limiting their card choices.
A deceptively complex game of Cops versus Robbers.
Stats
Price
$20
Pieces
247
Age
6+ (4+)
Players
2-4
Length
10-20
Style
Head-to-Head Strategy, Differentiated Goals
Randomness
Medium
The Build
The layout of this game is a rather quaint metropolis. With the game board element from Lego it looks a bit reminiscent of how one might assume a "Heroica City" game. The set could serve as a decent, if simple introduction into micro
building techniques as it has no less than 10 unique structures, not including the prison. Most buildings are easily identifiable by minifig scale elements that, in effect, act as signage, such a money tile, pizza, or coffee cup. Then you have a light house and post modern architecture for another two leaving a couple that you can identify however you wish. The helicopter is probably my favorite build though.
The Rules
The great thing about this game is that it starts very simple but it actually has complex strategy that evolves as the game progresses. I have included a video at the bottom of this section that describes the rules with visuals if you want to skip the reading.
The goals differ based on what side you are playing. The thieves are attempting to a collect 10 cash tokens. The police are trying to catch all the thieves.
Each turn a player flips over one of seven movement tokens. These tokens have the numbers 1 through 6 as well as a "train." If you get a number, you select one of your microfigs and move them exactly that number of squares without doubling back. If you get the train you can move your figures to any one of seven "train stops" which are indicated by white squares.
If a thief ends their move adjacent, but not diagonal, to a building, they may attempt to rob the building. To do this they roll a Lego die. Two double cash sides will grant the player two cash tokens. The three helicopter/cash side will grant the thieves one cash token and allow the police to move the helicopter. The one helicopter side will result in no cash for the thieves but allow the police to move the helicopter.
The significance of the helicopter is that a building with a helicopter on it cannot be stolen from. This is relatively weak early in the game and very powerful late in the game.
The police also flip over a movement token on their turn. They want to end their movement exactly on a square occupied by a thief. If they do so, they remove the thief from the board and place them in the prison.
When all seven movement tokens have been used, they are all flipped over and "shuffled" again for a new round.
The Strategy
The core strategic element of the game is counting the cards. When a new round starts there are seven face down movement tokens. But each turn reveals a movement token and reduces the uncertainly of possible moves available for the rest of the round.
The player who can utilize this information to best effect has a very strong advantage in the game.
The Thieves side
Five of the six sides of the die results in cash with two of those sides resulting in double, this means, on average it will take 9 robberies to win the game. Early in the game you have many thieves but you can only move one at a time. In the first few turns it is very difficult NOT to loose microfigs because the police have many options open to them. In my experience, while you have four or three thieves it works best to spend most of your moves in high risk situations trying to get cash.
Try to get all your thief units off of the white squares early, as a police using the train can snap up thieves on train squares. Do not however, prioritize this over robbing.
When you get down to two thieves, it appears to be set to swap to a cautious strategy. Unless you are way behind, don't take a risk on robbing a location if chances are high you could get caught. Remember that by reading the movement tokens you can see where the Police might be able to get to. So choose moves that land you in squares that will not be reachable by the police. Also, do not fall into the habit of viewing proximity to the police as an inherently bad thing. A thief can be directly adjacent to a police officer, but if the 1 token has already been used for the round, then you are perfectly safe.
The Police side
Early in the game there are many slow moving targets to choose from and it is generally easy to acquire the first two thieves. It is hard to use the helicopter to good effect early on though because, with all the thief units, they have many options.
The thieves tend to be attracted to the Bank and Lighthouse because they offer four sides to rob, so one of these buildings is a solid target for the helicopter early in the game.
As the game continues and you whittle down the thieves the helicopter becomes critical to success. When you can move the helicopter, determine what moves the thieves have remaining to them for the round and try to place the helicopter on a building that would be possible for them to steal from.
That is to say. If the 1,2, 5, and 6 have been revealed then that leaves that means the thieves could rob a building that is 3 or 4 moves from a thief piece. Look for such buildings and put the helicopter on them.
When moving your police units do not get caught up in getting as close as possible to the thief units. If you can put your officer two squares away from a thief, but the 2 movement token has already been used for the round, then they will very likely get away. If you can't land directly on a thief, check to see if one of the upcoming movement tokens could allow the thief to reach a business. If your move can put you in front of that business, preventing it from being robbed, then that is likely the smarter move.
Randomness
There are technically two elements of randomness in the game, the die roll and the drawing of the movement tokens. The randomness of these elements do not, however, dominate the game, which allows strategy to win out most of the time.
The die has five of six sides that result in the thieves at least some cash, so it should always be assumed they will walk away with something. Also four of six sides result in the option for the police to move the helicopter, so it is relatively safe to assume the option will be available to them.
As for the movement tokens, yes, when they are all upside down, it is totally random what will be drawn, but with each flip, the uncertainly is reduced until it is zero. Savvy players will be able to reduce the impact of this uncertainty and utilize it to their advantage.
Solitaire and Underage Play
While there is turn to turn strategy in the game, the randomness does make it difficult for complex stratagems that last several turns and the revelation of a movement token provides a very finite set of possible actions. Thus it is possible to play a solitaire version of this game where you play each side based on statistically ideal moves...if you are into that.
Similarly and for the same reason, I have found that, although the minimum age is reported to be six, a four year old can get a lot of enjoyment out of this game. Yes, they don't understand predicting the movement tokens, but if you point out what squares their characters can land on each turn and leave it to them to decide the specifics, that, and the games narrative of Cops and Robbers, is usually enough to keep them quite happy.
Spot it! is the ideal game for quick competitive fun on an outing or at home.
Description
The actual rules and game play to Spot it! are a bit loose but they are all based on a fundamental mechanic. The game consists of 55 cards, each with 8 cartoonish symbols. The unique thing about the cards is that each has one and only one symbol in common with any other card. These symbols may vary in size and orientation, but are otherwise identical.
The variations of games you can play with the Spot It deck are all based on how quickly an individual can spot the matching symbols, thus the name of the game.
You can try out the mechanic with this online demo.
The most common "mini game" we play is to deal each player a card. The rest of the deck is then put face up in the center of the table. Players then call out a match between their own card and the card on the top of the deck. This action wins them the card which they then put on top of the card in hand. Everyone continues play with the new card on the top of the deck. When all the cards are taken, you compare card stacks. The person with the tallest stack wins the round.
Variations for Younger kids
Spot it! claims it is for ages seven plus. We have recently learned that there is a Spot It Junior with fewer symbols per card, but with some simple variations we have never really had a problem playing with our children, even before they were three. The main variation is to play the game as described above, but to take turns, which ended up teaching taking turns very well at the same time.
Usually you will be able to find the match before your kid, so if they need help, you can point to one symbol at a time and ask if it matches. We usually would throw in a few red herrings to keep it from being too easy.
Opinions
It is quick to learn, quick to set up, quick to tear down, and with the metal tin, it travels very well and is safe from most destructive forces, including one year olds. When nobody else is available to play with you can challenge yourself solitaire style.
This is mostly a game of skill. Although each pair of cards is selected randomly, this has little impact on the strategy one uses for matching. Sometimes you will encounter a run of cards in sequence that all share the same one element and this tends to lead to a sweep by that player but it is rare and usually does not affect the outcome of a game significantly.
An additional benefit for any gamers with kids is that the game play does not deteriorate severely if a few cards are lost.
Also, in a real pinch the tin with cards can double as a rattle/drum/tambourine.
For around $12 this game is worth its weight in gold.
The Small World 2 Kickstarter will be ending in a little more than 24 hours. The game is proven on the tabletop and you can still get it at a great price for a great price on the Ipad, Android, or PC at a great price.
Torment Kickstarter has less than two days left. Planescape Torment was a game that played like a novel. This new game is attempting a similar challenge where all your actions have consequences. Patrick Rothfuss fans (Name of the Wind) should take note that he is on the design team and will be doing some writing for the game.
