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Stronghold Games to publish "504" by Friedman Friese
- stormseeker75
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Stronghold Games is set to publish Friedman Friese's "504", a game system offering a staggering 504 games in one box. The game's release is scheduled for November 2015 with it's debut taking place at Essen Spiel in Germany.
Stronghold Games is proud to announce the publication of “504”, a game designed by the renowned game designer Friedemann Friese, co-published with 2F-Spiele.
504 is a revolutionary concept in game design. 504 offers the game enthusiast 504 different games in a single box, achieving this via the use of nine game modules, which can be merged together to form 504 unique play experiences. The nine modules are Pick-up & Deliver, Race, Privileges, Military, Exploring, Roads, Majorities, Production, and Shares.
In 504, players use the spiral bound “Book of 504 Worlds”, selecting three different modules in any order from the nine available, and thereby creating a unique “World”. For example, the selection of three modules for a World may create a game that is:
- A racing game that expands through exploration with technology improving the racing or exploration (World “253”).
- An 18XX-style stock game with network building for income and production sites to provide workers for the road building (World “968”).
- A wargame with a pick-up and deliver economy and bonus scoring from majorities (“World 417”).
Thematically in 504, scientists in the future are able to build small alternate Earths. Exactly 504 such Earths have thus far been built. The scientists have programmed each of these Worlds with an individual set of laws and rules, which the inhabitants strictly follow and consider most important for their lives. These may be exploration, consumption, economics, military, etc., and each is unique. You can visit all of these 504 alternate Earths to experience how the people are living, and decide which of these worlds harbours the best civilization. On which World do you want to live? Explore them all and decide!
Stronghold Games will release 504 as the second game in its new “The Great Designer Series”, which will highlight games from the best game designers in the world. 504 is designed by the renowned game designer Friedemann Friese, whose previous works include the acclaimed games Power Grid plus its many expansions, Friday, Fauna, Fearsome Floors, and many others.
The release of 504 continues the commitment of Stronghold Games to partner with publishers globally, bringing their great games to North America and the rest of the world, as well as to continue to publish great euro-game designs. 504 follows the success of two smash-hit 2014 euro-games from Stronghold Games, Panamax and Kanban: Automotive Revolution. Stronghold Games recently announced Porta Nigra, by renowned game design team Wolfgang Kramer & Michael Kiesling, as the first game in its new “The Great Designer Series”, scheduled to be released later this year.
Stronghold Games will print 504 at Ludofact Germany, the leading printer of hobby games in the world. 504has a tentative release date of November 2015. The MSRP for this game has not been set at this time.Stronghold Games will debut its English edition of 504 in October 2015 at the Essen Spiel in Germany. Co-publishing partners for other language editions of 504 will be announced imminently by 2F-Spiele.
“This is a revolutionary game design for the hobby game industry,“ said Stephen Buonocore, President of Stronghold Games. “It is an honor to be working with Friedemann Friese and his great company, 2F-Spiele, on such an ambitious and game-changing project.”
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- ChristopherMD
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- Cranberries
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- stormseeker75
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- Erik Twice
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So yeah, I appreciate this exists but..eh.
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I like the idea that I could have the ultimate new game at home and any time I get that urge to play something new or just learn a new system there's a box tailor made to create that experience hundreds of times.
This is what the BGG game should have been. An ultimate cult of the new title. A game about games, about designing games even. A game about learning new games and choosing a game to play. There's a lot going on just in the concept alone and it's certainly something I've never seen before. I've played games that tried a couple of different things here and there but nothing even close to this ambitious. I've had a good time with most of FF's previous games, or at least good enough that I trust he could do something really fascinating here.
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- Michael Barnes
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The problem is that most people won't come into this appreciative of the experimental nature of it. They won't regard it as successful unless a percentage of the games are as fun or as well designed as purpose-built games with fixed mechanics. People will try to figure out what the "good" games are instead of participating in the experiment as intended.
Very excited about it...I'll have to bug Buonocore for a copy.
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- SuperflyPete
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Mad Dog wrote: I just can't get excited about a game based on its mechanics or a mechanics based game.
Theme matters. This is completely devoid of theme, by design, and it's kind of ridiculous. This is the single most retarded money-grab in all of gaming. This is the Power Grid guy fucking up.
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- SuperflyPete
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Michael Barnes wrote: This is such an audacious concept...far more compelling to me than the Legacy thing. The idea of entire modular, interchangeable rule sets based on core mechanics is brilliant out of the box.
The problem is that most people won't come into this appreciative of the experimental nature of it. They won't regard it as successful unless a percentage of the games are as fun or as well designed as purpose-built games with fixed mechanics. People will try to figure out what the "good" games are instead of participating in the experiment as intended.
Very excited about it...I'll have to bug Buonocore for a copy.
With all due respect, and you know I respect you, this sounds so hypocritical. This is Emperor's New Clothes V2.0, in my estimation. It's experimental, yes, but when a guy takes a shitload of unrelated mechanics, no theme, stuffs it in a box, calls it a game, and sells it on Kickstarter, you don't call him experimental and audacious, you call him a cunt, more or less. This guy does it, and he's bold.
What the fuck, Jack?
This is bollocks. It's like taking pieces from 10 games, making rules that only apply to certain pieces, and saying, "When you use these pieces, these rules apply". No theme. No setting. Just random shit in a box with rules for each piece. This might as well be that fucking Cones of Dunshire, WITHOUT A THEME.
Holy. Fucking. Shit.
This is that scene in Ghostbusters. "Cats and dogs...."
Hope he makes a mint, so that we can all look back and laugh about how far the hobby has fallen from the days of Broadsides and Boarding Parties, and Thunder Road. You know, when AWESOME used to mean something.
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- Cranberries
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Even though I'm going into this as a fan of abstract gaming I do fully expect to see some theme under neath all of this. I don't think theme is that difficult to get across actually, especially today and being able to stand on the shoulders of our game design ancestors. You can chrome the fuck out of it but honestly the smallest little mechanics can quite often evoke plenty of theme for me without anything bolted on there to force feed it to me.
Looking over the modules included in this there are some very interesting options and I can see, just by piecing together games in my head based on his module selection, how you could find theme in there. Whats kind of interesting to me about this is that it may very well show that theme is much easier to apply to a game than we generally think. A lot of things get over designed and with a very minimal set you can quite often get a lot accomplished if you are smart about how you choose things. Economical designs can be every bit as thematic as games with piles of chrome and complicated rule sets... but they do usually require more work from the player and sometimes it's just a little more effort than most gamers want to put into it.
I'm actually excited at the concept of being able to play a game and then debate with buddies what the fuck it was about afterwards. I'd like to play a game that is ... I don't know, Economic, racing with touches of development (the tech tree module) and then figure out what might be happening. It's entirely possible for people to be playing a game and have each player think of it in an entirely different way, in an entirely different setting... I don't think I've done that before.
Even though I openly call this abstract I want to make it clear that I fully expect to be looking for interesting thematic touches in this game... and finding them as well. But I also recognize that several people around here will simply be not interested in looking for them and may see them as too obfuscated to be worthwhile.
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I'm interested in following the game but to be honest I have very little interest in playing. I already game up at a shop so it's a constant battle to get something to the table more than it takes to count on one hand, so a game which is going to be like a new game every time doesn't appeal to me. I could walk out into the shop and pick from the hundreds of games on the shelf and come back with something more concise and unified.
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