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Dec. 3rd, 2014 08:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_rckHands down, what do you think your favorite game is to play and why? (For wyldbutterflies)
This is a difficult one as I don't play many games. My anxiety gets in the way of most board or card games, and I lack the hand-eye coordination to play most videogames (some of those also make me feel sick when I watch someone else play). I've been told that there might be some very story centric games out there that would work for me, but I have no idea where even to begin to find such things, and all I have to play things on is my laptop and our WiiU.
For the Wii, for a while, I was hooked on Cradle of Rome (a matching game that is kind of like Candy Crush if I'm understanding what Candy Crush is properly), but putting it into the console seems like too much work most of the time, and I really need to wear my glasses for it. I also, for a time, played a lot of Animal Crossing: City Folk, but I got discouraged when we lost all of our saved games and I had to start over again.
On my laptop, I play hidden object games. My favorites there are the games in the Dark Parables series that I buy from Big Fish Games. They have story, pleasant graphics, challenging puzzles and something I can't quite define that appeals to me more than what I've found in other hidden object games. I just have to be really careful-- Not all of Big Fish's games are compatible with OS 10.7.5 and so they don't all work properly with my system. I'm still training myself to check for OS compatibility before I buy.
Scott and I have discovered that I can play cooperative board and card games without panicking (and I really do panic when I try to play other games-- My brain goes fuzzy and sharp at the same time, and I start to shake, and I can't breathe right). I think my favorite there is Sentinels of the Multiverse, but I'm not sure that that isn't simply because it's the one I've played the most, the one I know best. We've not yet managed a complete game of Fortune and Glory. Forbidden Island seems almost impossible to win. Paperback is fairly straightforward for me, but we don't play with all the rules in force.
As far as table top role playing games go-- Well, I'll play anything. I don't much care what the system is as long as it's not too obtrusive and as long as I'm not expected to know exactly what the rules are in all situations. I tend to think that the rules are there as a fallback when role playing can't cover a particular situation. I like games that require creative thought. I'd rather role play my way through a challenge than deal with combat or other things involving die rolling. (Scott and I once played a demo of a spy game where the goal was to abduct someone who was holed up in an embassy. The other groups playing the scenario went for frontal attacks. Scott and I and the other fellow in our group got creative. My character was a journalist, so she went into the embassy to interview our target and poisoned him so that he'd need to go to the hospital. The ambulance was ours. The GM threw in a fairly random combat and car chase because we were having too easy a time of it.)
As a GM, I tend to play rules light. I've even run GURPS that way. My games sometimes involve combat but more often don't. I've run GURPS, Amber diceless, old school World of Darkness games, a couple of home rules variants on percentile systems, and a lot of LARPs using my own rules system. I think running LARPs is my first preference because it's a lot of fun to see where players take the characters.
For me, LARPs are a lot more work than table top games because I tend to GM by the seat of my pants for table top games (I have some vague ideas to start with and a few NPCs in mind with their motivations and plans roughly sketched in). Writing a LARP is kind of like writing the start of twenty different novels (assuming there are twenty characters). Each character has to be the center of their own story and have connections to other characters and goals and plans. I have to design the game so that it can run if some characters aren't played, but at the same time, each character has to be essential in some way so that nobody feels like they're playing a walk on or otherwise minor character.
Of course, none of this really answers the original question. My favorite game ever is really hard to pin down because I've played so many of them. I think it would have to be a role playing game. There have been some excellent games, games where the players really clicked with the GM and the story just took off. I think, though, that the games I've enjoyed most were the round robins, the games where people took turns GMing but we stuck with the same characters and setting throughout. I was in one game where we switched GMs every hour or two, and that worked because the group came together so well.
I think, though, that my favorite game ever isn't really the game I had the most fun playing. There's an Amber diceless game that saved my life, and I have to put that first. This was during the period right before I stopped working. Things were really, really rough, and I increasingly couldn't cope with work and spent my time while there wishing I was dead. One day, I'd had enough, and I had a plan for going in to work and killing myself. But I had a game session scheduled that night, and I really wanted to know what was going to happen. And, as long as I wasn't at work, I didn't really want to die, not completely. So I called in sick instead. (This started the process that ended with the U library terminating my employment. That was messy, and I won't go into it.) I don't know if I'd actually have done it. I wanted to because I couldn't handle the anxiety that was piling on me, but I knew how devastated Scott would be. But... I was closer than I like to think about now, and simply having that game session to look forward to helped incredibly. It was kind of a silly thing to focus on, given the whole situation, but it worked somehow.
wyldbutterflies)This is a difficult one as I don't play many games. My anxiety gets in the way of most board or card games, and I lack the hand-eye coordination to play most videogames (some of those also make me feel sick when I watch someone else play). I've been told that there might be some very story centric games out there that would work for me, but I have no idea where even to begin to find such things, and all I have to play things on is my laptop and our WiiU.
For the Wii, for a while, I was hooked on Cradle of Rome (a matching game that is kind of like Candy Crush if I'm understanding what Candy Crush is properly), but putting it into the console seems like too much work most of the time, and I really need to wear my glasses for it. I also, for a time, played a lot of Animal Crossing: City Folk, but I got discouraged when we lost all of our saved games and I had to start over again.
On my laptop, I play hidden object games. My favorites there are the games in the Dark Parables series that I buy from Big Fish Games. They have story, pleasant graphics, challenging puzzles and something I can't quite define that appeals to me more than what I've found in other hidden object games. I just have to be really careful-- Not all of Big Fish's games are compatible with OS 10.7.5 and so they don't all work properly with my system. I'm still training myself to check for OS compatibility before I buy.
Scott and I have discovered that I can play cooperative board and card games without panicking (and I really do panic when I try to play other games-- My brain goes fuzzy and sharp at the same time, and I start to shake, and I can't breathe right). I think my favorite there is Sentinels of the Multiverse, but I'm not sure that that isn't simply because it's the one I've played the most, the one I know best. We've not yet managed a complete game of Fortune and Glory. Forbidden Island seems almost impossible to win. Paperback is fairly straightforward for me, but we don't play with all the rules in force.
As far as table top role playing games go-- Well, I'll play anything. I don't much care what the system is as long as it's not too obtrusive and as long as I'm not expected to know exactly what the rules are in all situations. I tend to think that the rules are there as a fallback when role playing can't cover a particular situation. I like games that require creative thought. I'd rather role play my way through a challenge than deal with combat or other things involving die rolling. (Scott and I once played a demo of a spy game where the goal was to abduct someone who was holed up in an embassy. The other groups playing the scenario went for frontal attacks. Scott and I and the other fellow in our group got creative. My character was a journalist, so she went into the embassy to interview our target and poisoned him so that he'd need to go to the hospital. The ambulance was ours. The GM threw in a fairly random combat and car chase because we were having too easy a time of it.)
As a GM, I tend to play rules light. I've even run GURPS that way. My games sometimes involve combat but more often don't. I've run GURPS, Amber diceless, old school World of Darkness games, a couple of home rules variants on percentile systems, and a lot of LARPs using my own rules system. I think running LARPs is my first preference because it's a lot of fun to see where players take the characters.
For me, LARPs are a lot more work than table top games because I tend to GM by the seat of my pants for table top games (I have some vague ideas to start with and a few NPCs in mind with their motivations and plans roughly sketched in). Writing a LARP is kind of like writing the start of twenty different novels (assuming there are twenty characters). Each character has to be the center of their own story and have connections to other characters and goals and plans. I have to design the game so that it can run if some characters aren't played, but at the same time, each character has to be essential in some way so that nobody feels like they're playing a walk on or otherwise minor character.
Of course, none of this really answers the original question. My favorite game ever is really hard to pin down because I've played so many of them. I think it would have to be a role playing game. There have been some excellent games, games where the players really clicked with the GM and the story just took off. I think, though, that the games I've enjoyed most were the round robins, the games where people took turns GMing but we stuck with the same characters and setting throughout. I was in one game where we switched GMs every hour or two, and that worked because the group came together so well.
I think, though, that my favorite game ever isn't really the game I had the most fun playing. There's an Amber diceless game that saved my life, and I have to put that first. This was during the period right before I stopped working. Things were really, really rough, and I increasingly couldn't cope with work and spent my time while there wishing I was dead. One day, I'd had enough, and I had a plan for going in to work and killing myself. But I had a game session scheduled that night, and I really wanted to know what was going to happen. And, as long as I wasn't at work, I didn't really want to die, not completely. So I called in sick instead. (This started the process that ended with the U library terminating my employment. That was messy, and I won't go into it.) I don't know if I'd actually have done it. I wanted to because I couldn't handle the anxiety that was piling on me, but I knew how devastated Scott would be. But... I was closer than I like to think about now, and simply having that game session to look forward to helped incredibly. It was kind of a silly thing to focus on, given the whole situation, but it worked somehow.
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no subject
Date: 2014-12-03 09:55 pm (UTC)Your talk of LARPs really makes me want to give one a try.
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Date: 2014-12-04 12:58 pm (UTC)LARPs can be a lot of fun. I think I enjoy running them more than I do playing in them, but that's because I'm not great at most LARPs. My characters tend to die stupidly. I'm also pretty picky about how games are written and run because I have experience with that side of things. There are a lot of people who design games with just a few characters who matter to the plot and a lot of characters who are just kind of there.
If you think you could find a place to run and players, I have a number of LARP scenarios that I'd be happy to let you try running. I wrote and ran my first LARP without having played in one, so it's quite possible to GM first. Of course, not everyone enjoys GMing. You would need an assistant to help you run (combat in pretty much every LARP I've ever seen requires GM moderation). Our rules run about five pages. Most of my scenarios are designed for 15-20 players. I have one that works with 12-14, and two or three that are larger than 20. I usually run in one 4-6 hour session, but back in college, when I was starting, we usually did two 4 hour sessions. The game, in my experience, will shape itself to the time available.
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Date: 2014-12-04 02:28 am (UTC)...we won handily. They flat out don't believe me about games anymore. >_>
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Date: 2014-12-04 12:47 pm (UTC)But that does sound like the sort of thing that would naturally happen. I'm sure it's a corollary of some sort to Murphy's Law.
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Date: 2014-12-04 04:37 pm (UTC)>_< This is the problem with me being the one who owns all the games. I //suck// at figuring out how the rules work.
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Date: 2014-12-04 05:34 pm (UTC)I will have to look up those hidden object games since we tend to like those sort of things.
And for what it's worth, I am glad you are still here, happy that you are on my list, and relieved that that game saved your life.
no subject
Date: 2014-12-06 02:16 am (UTC)I'm glad to still be here. I kind of regret the fact that I can't work any more, but at the same time, I wouldn't have Cordelia if I were still working. And I might not survive trying to work again.
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Date: 2014-12-06 01:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-12-06 02:20 am (UTC)::hugs back:: I'm glad to still be here.
no subject
Date: 2014-12-06 03:43 am (UTC)For story games, have you checked out Fail Better Games? http://www.failbettergames.com/
I played Fallen London for a while. It was creepy but fun - but they have other games now; I'm not sure if any would suit. Very story-based. You can suffer setbacks, but there's no 'lose' condition that I'm aware of.
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Date: 2014-12-03 02:28 pm (UTC)I, for one, am very glad that you're still here!!!!
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Date: 2014-12-06 02:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-12-03 08:06 pm (UTC)As for games, my current (non-rp) favorite is word-grid, where the computer gives you a grid of letters and you have to figure out what words can be made with adjacent letters, which is really addictive to me. Even if it rejects words I know are real. The other thing that makes me happy is the "choose your own adventure" games, which are all text-based and allow you to have fun being as bad/good as you feel like. I have a lot of them, and play them when I'm feeling blah.
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Date: 2014-12-06 02:41 am (UTC)Word-Grid sounds like fun. I'll have to look into it.
Where do you find choose your own adventure games? They might be of interest to me.
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Date: 2014-12-06 05:34 am (UTC)As for the choose your own adventure games, the company that makes most of them is called "Choice of Games" and they are put out for the Android phone (or iphone) but there are some available for the PC on Steam now. I can recommend Way Walkers University and Tin Star (I like Tin Star because I've been able to play my sheriff as a minority and as a poly bi person with two romances and still achieve all the sheriff-ly goals, which is kind of amusing, though not terribly historically accurate, but what the hey!) I also like the sf one, Mecha Ace. I have tried nearly all of the ones that are out there, and I find that if you get a longer one, you can replay them, choosing all sorts of different angles, and while the major events are pretty scripted, you can usually find some cool easter eggs in the games.