Tales of a converted Ameritrasher: the years of doubt and re-lapse

It’s a lot easier to be for something when a bunch of annoying dweebs are against it.

And one day it was over. I remember it clearly. It was an average Monday, with some delicate rays of sunlight and a cat paw in my face waking me up. I sat at the breakfast table looking at a boiled egg, and realized: I am done with 35 page manuals. Somehow my head couldn't take another one of those

And then you have to teach those 35 pages to someone else. No thank you.

I completely agree about the "hybrid" thing, and how the two camps have somehow moved more towards a middleground, but that said, I don't agree about FFG making more streamlined games these days. Rebellion is just as needlessly complex in places like the FFG 5 years ago. As much as I love the layers in Rebellion, the combat system is tremendously fiddly in places.
Compare that to the clean approach of some good euro's and you will have a hard time to see the elegance in Rebellion. Sure, FFG has made the learning process somewhat easier by deviding rules over 3 booklets...but you are still facing 35 pages of rules.

My point was also not so much about theme VS mechanics, but more about stripped down designs VS excessive detail.
I think a game with half the rules of a typical FFG game can be just as thematic. Sometimes more, because an overload in rules could also mean distraction from the actual gameworld the game system attempts to render.

The thing is...if I want to play a euro, I want to play it for the smooth ride and accesability of being able to play it within a short timeframe with easy to learn rules i can explain in 5 minutes flat.
If I want theme I can forgive and actually see the charm in excessive detail that might render things fiddly and
a bit of a struggle to digest.

It's an attitude. If you pay CAYLUS and yell "HOHN HOHN HOHN, HOW WILL ZEE DUKE DU MAUNUPAURNESSENT ARRET MON PLAHNS MAINTNO?!" It's an AT game.

To be fair, 900 page rule books are an result of people that need to have their hands held. We made a pretty damned simple game at its core and we still get dozens of questions.

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I like games that are fun. Full stop.

Shapeshifter wrote: The thing is...if I want to play a euro, I want to play it for the smooth ride and accesability of being able to play it within a short timeframe with easy to learn rules i can explain in 5 minutes flat.
If I want theme I can forgive and actually see the charm in excessive detail that might render things fiddly and
a bit of a struggle to digest.

That's me. There is only so much rules complexity I'm willing to tolerate in a Euro, a hard ceiling in terms of rules crunch. If I'm going to play a game with a lot of rules or complexity, it damned well better have a strong theme, and one that I like.

Today’s reason you need 900 page rules:

“Can you or bad guys stand on objectives?”
“Page 19, Page 20. No.”

jeb wrote: It's an attitude. If you pay CAYLUS and yell "HOHN HOHN HOHN, HOW WILL ZEE DUKE DU MAUNUPAURNESSENT ARRET MON PLAHNS MAINTNO?!" It's an AT game.

I tend to get annoyed looks when I try to inject this sort of espièglerie into a Euro game.

This site has recently featured a lot of posts by eurogame apologists. But eurogames fundamentally discourage most forms of interaction, especially conversation, laughter, and enthusiastic exclamations. It's goddamned fun-murdering, and we all know it.

Shellhead wrote: This site has recently featured a lot of posts by eurogame apologists. But eurogames fundamentally discourage most forms of interaction, especially conversation, laughter, and enthusiastic exclamations. It's goddamned fun-murdering, and we all know it.

Sick takedown, bro.

Shellhead wrote: This site has recently featured a lot of posts by eurogame apologists. But eurogames fundamentally discourage most forms of interaction, especially conversation, laughter, and enthusiastic exclamations. It's goddamned fun-murdering, and we all know it.

As mentioned in the article, I think it's a group and time commitment thing. If you're playing with just your wife and mother-in-law on a Tuesday night, you're not going to play Twilight Imperium 2E. My most common gaming partner lately is my wife, and even that's pretty rare these days. She enjoys X-Wing quite a bit, but we usually only have the time for Dominion or a game of Pandemic Legacy Season 2 when we do scratch out time for it. We're all occasionally jealous of Erik Twice's epic game days, but Barnes plays a bunch of his games solo, Thrower's most common player(s) seems to be his offspring, Pete just plays flix and guitar picks, and I've 100%'d Into the Breach twice. Even my son who loved Dino Dunk would rather play minecraft or fortnite now that we've been back from vacation.

Hybridization is real though, and quite popular. Look at Gloomhaven, Alchemists, Scythe? Dead of Winter is probably more like Pandemic or Castles of Burgundy than Zombicide.

Jexik wrote: We're all occasionally jealous of Erik Twice's epic game days, but Barnes plays a bunch of his games solo, Thrower's most common player(s) seems to be his offspring, Pete just plays flix and guitar picks, and I've 100%'d Into the Breach twice. Even my son who loved Dino Dunk would rather play minecraft or fortnite now that we've been back from vacation.

I'm actually surprised people are jealous of my game days, I can't shake the feeling I misspend half of my gaming time.

One thing I will disagree with is that there are some AT games that are quite easy to explain and teach, like Nexus Ops, Cosmic, DDAS, etc.