Buried Gems of the Ameritrash Rehabilitation Movement

Michael Barnes wrote: ...it has THE GREATEST RULE OF ALL TIME...if you're behind, you can literally stake the entire game on completing a mission. If you pull it off, you get a massive bonus and could win from being dead last. If you fail, the rail company you represent is left in shambles and shamed out of business. You're eliminated.

Escape from Colditz has this as the "Do or Die" cards, which is a mechanic every game should have.

If you haven't played Escape from Colditz do yourself a favor and find a copy to play ASAP. A Classic game that has stood the test of time.

LA

I've found the stead rewriting of Warhammer over the years rather entertaining. Remember that Games workshop started out as the UK distributor for DnD. GW had been around about a decade before their own in house minis games started to take off.

If you read 1st ed WFRP or early rule books etc, the influence of DnD is really obvious. Moorcock is listed in AD&D appendix N as an influence of Gygax but it wouldn't surprise me if it was a direct source for Priestly et al as well.

The Gothic Game is definitely one that needs to get a nod here...even though it's painfully scarce and I can count the number of copies I've physically seen in my life on...my ears.

It's total roll-and-move and VERY old fashioned...some have compared it to Talisman, but that's not really right at all. You roll and move your way into various rooms in the gothic castle and draw cards that are themed around the room. So you might be in the ballroom when a chandelier falls on you and kills you instantly, eliminating you from the game. Capricious to the extreme, it's the kind of game where cards and board position line up to create once-in-a-lifetime events that are usually hilarious. This tends to happen at least once a game.

It's a pure elimination game. The idea is that you want to find weapons and then use them to off the other players...who may or may not have the one counter card corresponding to the weapon you're using.

There are some NASTY rules. The "power of adjacency" means that if you are next to another player's pawn, you get to choose where they move. Such as, into the endless staircase or next to the vampire. The vampire is a large pawn that rests in a crypt. The first player that goes there gets this pawn put over their regular one and they get several turns to run around and kill other players. Of course there's a wooden stake that kills the vampire player.

There's also the ability to dump poo from up on a tower down onto a player, which makes them smelly and other players can't go into the room with them. I have never played this game and not had the whole table just rolling by the end of it.

Confession time. Back around 2007, I actually got in contact with the designer because I had some ideas to get the game back in print. I sent him some files with some "modern" rules which I think would have made the game marketable, but I was also adamant that the game be completely, 100% playable in its original form with all of the original rules. I had new cards, just a couple of new rules (mostly to shush crybabies), and a concept for new artwork that would have totally kept the orignal's tone and amazing logo. He loved it, and was actually on board. So I got to talking with Dollar Bill (the "good" AGF partner) and another friend of mine to start talking about doing the paperwork, financing a reprint, getting it published and so forth and it just kind of fell through because Dollar Bill (who was going to bankroll the whole thing) lost interest as young, wealthy people tend to do so it just stalled out and went nowhere.

Wait, I take that back. I did actually play one time with a table of people who just didn't get the game at all. It was the same night I played Thurn und Taxis for my first and only time.

It was a group of six, all hardcore BGG types. Customers of mine, when I was doing the home delivery thing. These were the kind of people that carried around little notebooks to write down the names of games they want to play and check them off when they do. 35-50 year old, middle aged porkers. A couple of tubby gamer-wives that never got the memo that ladies shouldn't bellow or snort. Table full of total stereotypes.

Anyway, I brought the game because Steve Avery wanted to play it but he wound up not showing up so it was me and the Puerto Rico fan club. About four turns in, I could see brows furrowing. And they all sort of adopted that weird, condescending manner- "do you really like this game?" "I'm not seeing where there are any decisions here." "I would use the term 'game' loosely to describe this"...and of course..."we ought to just roll dice and knock whoever rolls the lowest out". They made me feel like such a kid, bringing a game to the table that wasn't proper. But I made the most of it and just had fun, cracking jokes and trying to make them feel as awkward as they were making me feel.

But that was the one time that The Gothic Game tanked.

BGG marketplace- $300. Jesus.

The Gothic Game looks easy enough to PnP if the designer was interested in releasing the files (assuming he still has them). I've wanted a copy for a long time but haven't tried in earnest to get one.

SuperflyTNT wrote: Other than that, I think the new D&D Adventure System games beat it out pretty soundly.

If you like dungeon crawls to be a strange hybrid of randomly sadistic Pandemic AI without any cohesive or coherent overlying plotline, then perhaps.

Otherwise, your drunk if you think AI is better than a human DM.

Great bits to use in REAL dungeon crawls though.

Wish I could spew some negativity on some of the games in this thread (Cutthroat Caverns, Lineage II), but I won't.

Michael Barnes wrote: BGG marketplace- $300. Jesus.

It has also not been on eBay for at least 4 years. I know, because eBay will send me an e-mail if it ever is.

Also:

Michael Barnes wrote: These were the kind of people that carried around little notebooks to write down the names of games they want to play and check them off when they do. 35-50 year old, middle aged porkers. A couple of tubby gamer-wives that never got the memo that ladies shouldn't bellow or snort.

Jesus.

DukeofChutney wrote: I've found the stead rewriting of Warhammer over the years rather entertaining. Remember that Games workshop started out as the UK distributor for DnD. GW had been around about a decade before their own in house minis games started to take off.

If you read 1st ed WFRP or early rule books etc, the influence of DnD is really obvious. Moorcock is listed in AD&D appendix N as an influence of Gygax but it wouldn't surprise me if it was a direct source for Priestly et al as well.

I still have original White Dwarf Magazines that were pretty much entirely ads for D&D products. Gamma world articles, new D&D monsters. Its pretty humorous how GW doesn't acknowledge the existence of any other game company nowadays, since they got their start sucking at the teat of other companies.

As for why Warhammer came about, I dont really care. Chainmail was used for the same purpose long before GW were even a business. GW wasnt the first game in town to fantasy battles, they just been at it the longest. And they still suck at it.

Shellhead wrote: Just for a random example, take Asteroid.

What about TRIPLANETARY, that was pretty cool

Michael Barnes wrote: Confession time. Back around 2007, I actually got in contact with the designer because I had some ideas to get the game back in print. I sent him some files with some "modern" rules which I think would have made the game marketable, but I was also adamant that the game be completely, 100% playable in its original form with all of the original rules. I had new cards, just a couple of new rules (mostly to shush crybabies), and a concept for new artwork that would have totally kept the orignal's tone and amazing logo. He loved it, and was actually on board. So I got to talking with Dollar Bill (the "good" AGF partner) and another friend of mine to start talking about doing the paperwork, financing a reprint, getting it published and so forth and it just kind of fell through because Dollar Bill (who was going to bankroll the whole thing) lost interest as young, wealthy people tend to do so it just stalled out and went nowhere.

KICKSTARTER.