My group's Seafall campaign

That kind of screwball game-giving-you-the-middle-finger stuff can be a lot of fun in short games. It can be a lot of fun in long games if the game gives you a way to weasel out of the calamity (Civilization, etc.)

Here, in a many-session campaign, it just seems shitty.

I once playtested a game prototype that had a big roadblock type thing in it in the latter part of the game. It sucked all the wind out of our sails because the negative effect applied to everyone at the table. The game had a number of paths to victory but everybody at the table was going the trade/culture path because it was the most lucrative, obvious even to us playing the game for the first time. The unsubtle roadblock came out and made trade far less lucrative. The designer's explanation? "In playtests people win too easily with trade, especially my buddy Alex, so I put this in to balance it out."

I don't know if it is right in this case, but that theory certainly fits. I wonder if he thought colonies can make you too powerful, so this was a solution instead of changing how colonies work?

Edit - I went looking around on BGG about Patmos and saw this:

[Daviau] has mentioned he never expected Ker to remain unconquered for long, but when it so seriously takes some players out of contention and the people best equipped to get those players out of that rut are the ones who most benefit from them staying in it, I'm surprised it wasn't foreseen.

Interesting. And apparently Ker is a pretty good colony to have (I haven't really looked at it yet). So maybe someone will go after it, despite the "benefit" of leaving Alex impotent.

Supposed to play again tonight, but once again scheduling conflicts prevented it. Alex, Travis, and I played something else instead. We did chat about Seafall though. Alex, who is the person who pushed us to play the game in the first place, mentioned that it is kind of a slog. Which I agree with. He also mentioned some interview with Daviau where he said he was working on this game for 4 years, and he just had to put it out, which didn't inspire confidence. He then asked us if we were actually having fun playing it. The main reason I focus so much on exploring is because I like the little choose your own adventure aspects to the exploring. If that wasn't in the game, I definitely wouldn't have much interest or incentive to keep playing. Looks like we'll be playing at least a few more games to see if it gets any better, but ultimately, I don't see us making it much further.

I don't see the point of a legacy euro game. The whole point of legacy seems to be a format where things permanently change and create a stronger sense of narrative. But a euro game is inherently going to be based on a boring topic, or else a boring treatment of a topic. So a euro legacy game is going to be like a long, boring story.

Game 6

We finally managed to get all 5 players together. Will has missed 3 games so he needed a refresher. He also needed to have all the new rules revealed since he last played explained to him. It was a lot of info for him to absorb.

Maybe it’s because I named her, but I find this hilarious:



James once again started the process to get a colony, that he has been screwed out of the last 2 or 3 games. Because Patmos makes everything harder, most of us taxed (collect 3 gold) over and over again since there wasn’t a whole lot else we could do.

I upgraded my ship for extra Explore stats so I could go discover some new islands. Which I did, though I almost sank in the process with a bad roll. It was underwhelming. I headed back home to repair the damage, just to set out again to look for another island.

Will started upgrading his ships for raiding. He immediately attacked James and sank his ship. Luckily for James, it was not the ship with a bunch of goods on it (needed for a colony). James received a bunch of enmity from Will and immediately cashed it in for a boosted attack on Will’s home province and stole all the gold from his vault.

Will then tried to conquer one of Alex’s colonies with a raid, but failed. He then upgraded again for more raid benefits.

This whole time Alex is basically doing nothing but taxing and building structures, since Patmos prevents him from doing anything else really.

Now we are on Turn 8. Will sets himself up pretty well to attempt to conquer Ker, which is Patmos’ colony, which will end the negative effects it is causing. Will has a pool of 16 dice, and loses 5 of them to the colony’s defense garrison. Now he has 11 to roll. He needs 6 successes to conquer Ker. 4 of the 6 sides of the dice have successes on them (the other 2 are blank). He rolls…3 successes and fails spectacularly. He takes 3 damage in the process, and just barely manages to avoid sinking by losing one of his upgrades, which loses him a VP.

On my way to and from my home province to repair, I have been researching and found both halves of a treasure map. To use the map, I have to go to the eastern-most iron market and explore. Too bad we haven’t found an iron market yet. So I’ll sit on that forever, since Travis and I are really the only people exploring. And I spent all game finding a new island and repairing the damage from doing so, which means I didn’t explore any new sites.

On what would prove to be the last turn, James finally managed to get his colony, I found another island (which was a nice VP boost this time). Alex build a 5th structure, fulfilling that Milestone, giving him a bunch of VPs and triggering the game end. During the end of game process, we did manage to wipe a bunch of permanent enmity off of Patmos, lessening its negative impact.

The final scores didn’t change the order at all. Alex is still in first, I’m still in second, and the rest are still in the same place they have been in for the last 3 games.
This game lasted for nearly 4 hours, and not much happened. And that is the problem. Every one of us thinks the game is boring. You have to put so much time and effort in getting your thing going, only to have the payoff be pretty minor, assuming you actually succeed. If you fail, you just wasted the entire game.

So why are we still playing? I don’t know. I think we are just curious enough to want to see what is in the last two boxes. After the game, it occurred to me that we aren't even halfway through the campaign. I’m 100% positive we won’t finish this thing. None of us are having fun playing this. We’ll probably play one or two more, but I think that will be it.

Disgustipater wrote: Game 6

We finally managed to get all 5 players together. Will has missed 3 games so he needed a refresher. He also needed to have all the new rules revealed since he last played explained to him. It was a lot of info for him to absorb.

Maybe it’s because I named her, but I find this hilarious:

.

Somebody contact Cranberries and let him know that THIS is the kind of humor that will get you "thank yous". Hilarity!

I can understand wanting to see it through... but at the end of the day, your free time is valuable. Cut your losses.

hotseatgames wrote: I can understand wanting to see it through... but at the end of the day, your free time is valuable. Cut your losses.

Sounds like a table flip might be a merciful way to end this game.

Youch. This one is getting rough.

Considering we have two fresh copies of Risk Legacy, I really am questioning why we are still playing.

Due to the wording on one of the Milestones that unlocks one of the last two boxes, it's going to be another pre-set island. Thinking about it now, that's not very interesting to me. The final box isn't even available until after we open this box, so now I'm realizing that it is totally not worth it.

Maybe I can convince everyone to take Seafall out to the backyard and set it on fire. For real.

We got together last night for another game. However, before we even opened the Seafall box, we collectively decided that we'd rather play something we'd actually enjoy. Permanently. We're officially done with it. We were going to open the last two unlockable boxes but one player was missing, so we will wait until we are all present. I will post about the contents and my thoughts on them when that happens.

Seafail.

Spoilers ahead, obviously.

I doubt many people are even interested in this anymore, but coming up on two years later, we finally opened up the rest of the Seafall stuff. It took us a while to even remember how the game progresses in order to open all the stuff in sequence.

The battery operated item turned out to be a little LED light. Similar to those little keychain fobs. Except this is a black light or something similar that reveals hidden text on cards and other items. A neat little trick, though I feel it is underutilized.

After some storytelling stuff, it is revealed that there is some secret society hiding something. Then you get a rule that lets you interrogate advisers by secretly shining the Light of Truth on their card and see if a hidden number shows up. This is their rank in the society. Then you have to go around collecting these 8 tablets and shine the light on them to reveal a symbol and its corresponding number. In the back of the entries book, there are several hidden sequences of 3 symbols that you have to decode from having already gotten the tablets, which lead to an entry in the book that sometimes reveals a treasure. Each time you shine the light one thing, it is one action. Most of the advisers don’t have anything. A hell of a lot of work for not much return.

Once you are able to do all of this and get enough secret advisors, you sail out to find what they are hiding. It turns out they are hiding a literal gate to Hell. Once you find this, the game ends, and the person with the most points becomes the emperor. At this point, the game dumps an entire deck of Hell-based event cards on you and the players’ goal now is to close the gate to Hell. The process to do that involves ferrying items around and getting enough bonuses to be able to pass a hefty dice roll check.

The entire game just feels like tedious busywork. And keep in mind that I skipped a ton of steps in this whole progression since they weren’t interesting enough for me to even remember. I’m happy we stopped when we did.

Thanks for the update! Seafall is more or less what we got instead of a reprint of the Summoner Wars Master Set, because Plaid Hat wanted to chase a legacy design for the five minutes that was a good idea.

Perhaps the box itself is the Gate to Hell.