Worthwhile older games that are still OOP

Legomancer wrote: I don't think KS is the main or even a major factor in this, but it definitely contributes. The fact is, there are a shit ton of games coming out constantly right now, through KS and regular channels. Right now the top focus for a lot of gamers is the churn, just trying to check off as many new games as possible. There's little desire to even look back to last month, much less 10 years ago. When Old Man Lartigue was first around BGG there was a definite sort of "canon" of games that were respected. Caylus was the first "new" one to really break into that group, then Agricola. But now there doesn't seem to be a sense of history -- partly because a lot of those games are now OOP but also partly because there's no real desire for it. I'd be surprised if people charging $100+ for TTD are getting it; it's not a $100 game and I can't imagine anyone who would want it not already having it. Hell, Knizia isn't even a thing much anymore.

It's not just board games, a lot of nerd culture (and pop culture in general) is just drinking from a firehose, looking at the next thing coming up while the last hot thing is forgotten.

True dat. A few years from now, will anyone even be playing say Terraforming Mars ?

I do think KS contributes a fair bit in that it not only floods the market with product , but it has raised the bar in a lot of gamers eyes. I see reprints where the publisher clearly feels obligated to pimp out the game components to catch gamers attention.

I think the Terraforming Mars example touches on the heart of the matter.

And that is the capricious nature of gamers and publishers trying their best to keep up with their evolving attentions.

Why spend so many resources to reprint a solid proven title when you can jump on ks, offer a half assed product that touches the darker parts of our psyches (limited product! Be one of the few! You're now special because you got in on the ground floor! FOMO! This might actually be one of the good ones!) and profit more from that?

Colorcrayons wrote: I think it has to do with moods. Am I in the mood for a light game that offers a masochistic experience to match my dark sense of schadenfreude? Then I'll play dungeon quest.

Ami in the mood for a brainburner whose mechanisms make for personal victory over the intellect of another person? Then I'll play a meaty abstract.

I agree with that. And I'm not trying to condemn anyone for liking Dunegonquest. I've played the original and owned FFG's reprint. I had fun playing them. It was just on the absolute bottom of the list whenever we got together and decided to play a game because there were things that seemed far more rewarding to all of us. But if people like it, hey, go for it. The last thing I'm going to do is tell someone they're wrong for liking something, as if that were even possible. I just always arched an eyebrow at the lionization that some of that stuff received around here.

Man, I'd love to play some Epic Armageddon again.

Dune
Up Front (though you can kind of get the materials to play via WarGameVault)
Ambush (as an app)

Time Agent (wanted to try but probably best left at that)

Jackwraith wrote: I just always arched an eyebrow at the lionization that some of that stuff received around here.

I get that too. I can't speak for anyone else, but I do know for me it has to do with my expectations of goals for gaming. For me lately, if I'm not laughing and yucking it up with people around me, the time is wasted. So I choose games that are vehicles which promote this goal. Vehicles with a significant random factor, but still interesting to watch what occurs when that random event takes place. Surely not games of skill, but a decent excuse to gather together socially without distracting too much from that social need. Dungeonquest, wiz-war, etc. Games that are quite universally reviled by those who typically frequent BGG since they do not offer a certain brand of what they often refer to as 'cleverness' in how they add up points at the end of their multiplayer solitaire puzzle. A puzzle where they sit as solemn monks contemplating the inner workings of the puzzle set before them. Enjoying this is infrequent to me.

Dungeonquest is bad from a mechanical perspective, where you can be ejected from the game first turn. This is surely a flaw when considering game theory. But from a perspective where you just want an excuse to gather with like minded people to create your own irreverent shared experience unique to that specific social gathering, it gets the job done admirably.

This is why I like the FFG reprint of wiz war. They have taken away the stuff that simply stops you from interacting with the game at large (losing turns, being the major example) and still allows that 'fun' factor to remain while rewarding some cleverness in creativity utilizing the cards you have randomly drawn. I'm not sure if they could do the same to Dungeonquest and keep the heart of the game intact. And judging by their last attempt at fudging which Dungeonquest design, I think the answer is a resounding "No".

SuperflyTNT wrote: I want it. I had a copy which ended up in an airliner's cabin area: it fell from my bag.

Not for $100+ you don't.

Legomancer wrote:

SuperflyTNT wrote: I want it. I had a copy which ended up in an airliner's cabin area: it fell from my bag.

Not for $100+ you don't.

You ain't kidding, brother. I could print and play it far cheaper and prettier.

SuperflyTNT wrote:

Legomancer wrote:

SuperflyTNT wrote: I want it. I had a copy which ended up in an airliner's cabin area: it fell from my bag.

Not for $100+ you don't.

You ain't kidding, brother. I could print and play it far cheaper and prettier.

How will you replicate the delicate pastel shades of those tiny camels? Maybe you could just cherish your memories of playing Through the Desert, because the reality of that shallow game will never live up to your nostalgia for it.

Hoity Toity/Adel Verpflichtet is out of print right now, and that's a shame. It's proven to be a big hit with a lot of different groups. A lot of Zoch games are also out of print in English, like Manila and Tobago. A shame that, those are some of the best German games out there.

For more epic stuff, Dune is really the big one I can think of. Duel of Ages II has mostly dried up, but that's probably too recent and niche to really be that sought-after yet.

Star Wars Epic Duels is another obvious candidate. Any new content would be easy to integrate with the old game too, assuming the minis are all the same scale. That's one of my son's favorite games, and I'd love to play more with him.

san il defanso wrote: Star Wars Epic Duels is another obvious candidate. Any new content would be easy to integrate with the old game too, assuming the minis are all the same scale. That's one of my son's favorite games, and I'd love to play more with him.

There's a Yahoo! group that made a bunch of expansion decks and I ended up making the Lando (with 2 Bespin Guards) and Grievous (with 2 Magna Guards) decks to go with my copy. I used Star Wars Miniatures figs and if it wasn't such a pain in the ass to make the cards - and if some of the minis like Cad Bane weren't so expensive - I would have done more factions.

I like tracking down old games, and it isn't for nostalgia. I grew up playing Milton Bradley, not Games Workshop. A lot of older games are not particularly elegant, balanced, or even have a reasonable play time. I've played some stinkers. So why bother? Because there's some super interesting stuff out there. There are a lot of games, especially from the 80s, where somebody said "I want to play a game about X." And they did. Stuff that made the game more about what the game was about went in, and elegance often went out the window.

Take Blood Royale for example. You end up at the table for hours arguing about trade and marriages and borders and money. You've got tons of handwritten character sheets for your entire family tree and everybody that married into it. You've got handwritten binding marriage contracts that are going to expire the minute one of the spouses dies and that could happen literally any turn on a roll of the die, or they could live to ripe old age. It's unwieldy as all hell. Character sheets all over the place, players taking notes, demanding to review contracts, and drawing out their family tree because it's near impossible to keep all those character sheets organized. But it's late middle ages as all hell and you really can't take away any piece of the design without losing something about the political land-grabbing resource-demanding army marching bloodline obsessing soul of it.

DungonQuest and Talisman are not good game designs either, and the older editions are particularly vicious. These are games that at every turn are potentially going to pull the rug out from under you. But for all the dungeon crawling and adventuring games since, there's never been anything that implements either game's goals any better than the originals. FFG understood that with their Talisman edition and managed to polish it up a bit without sanding off the rough edges that make it Talisman.

The appeal of these old games is that they came about before modern board game design came along and homogenized 90% of the market. The majority of older games are complete shit, but there are enough really interesting ones out there that I still enjoy tracking stuff down and giving it a play. Most the good stuff's been reprinted, but some of it never will be.

That is an EXCELLENT point, and one that is under-expressed, about homogeneity.

Part of what made Talisman, Wiz-War, Ogre, DungeonQuest, Magic Realm, Civilization, or even Settlers of Catan great was that they were at the time conceptually singular. There were not 20 different variations on the market with more on the way. You didn't have access to 20 different dungeoncrawls- it was Heroquest or nothing. Games were at that time coming from a more pioneering era when there weren't direct antecedents and you had designers like Eon or Hamblen that were creating rather than reiterating or repackaging.

Now, it is all about safe bets, repetition of success, and there are far fewer designers working outside of a particular circuit. Jim Felli would be a good (best?) example of a designer that is outside of that. He's not doing his take on deck building or legacy. He's starting from scratch and as such his work isn't homogenous.

It's funny you say that Barnes because the more wild and out there stuff is coming from Kickstarter (besides Nate Hayden and Jim Felli). Kingdom Death: Monster, Gloomhaven, Cthulhu Wars, the 7th Continent. None of those would be produced by a traditional publisher.

But a lot of what you just cited - is it wild because its mechanically unique ? Or more likely because they threw a shit ton of production value into it. CTHULU WARS for example is hardly a ground breaking design. What is ground breaking is that it has the single heaviest playing piece I've ever seen in a game. MAGIC REALM, CIV etc - that stuff was totally unique for its day. That's what Barnes was getting at I think.

KDM, Gloomhaven, and 7th Continent are mechanically unique. There's nothing like them.