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I liked both new segments. Hearing you guys argue over the title ( I liked Survival of the Funnest) was worth the price of admission even if the segment flopped. Not that it did.

For anyone that succumbed to Russ's mind control, like I did, coolstuffinc has a Castle Ravenloft and Wrath combo pack for $80.

Another great episode.

Great feedback everyone.

A few more comments...


=Arkham Horror=
We do have some huge fans of this game locally. For me, I'm just not that big of a Cthulu guy, and the game plays too long for me for what it is. Mansions of Madness however...

=Starcraft=
I'd definitely make a road trip to play Starcraft! Love that game. Email me the details.

=Dead Games=
As others pointed out, it was certainly NOT our intent to say that particular games were dead on any kind of global level. We were just discussing the view from our local level. We should also remember that I'm fairly certain that Raef's definition dead changed at least twice, possibly three times during the segment, so take all of that with a grain of salt.

=Value=
I definitely feel I got a great value from Descent. That's a good point. I feel the same way about 40k and Fantasy. I had many hours of fun with those games, and although I've since moved on I don't regret a penny I spent on them.

I'm sure I'll play more Descent someday, but after another fantastic game of Ashardalon last night, I'm looking forward to finding my Dungeon crawling fun in the D&D universe for the foreseeable future.

Finished the episode today.

First off, point taken on the 'dead game' declaration issue. 'Though, I'd love to see Heroclix get some D6 love sometime either in the form of a review or an interview with someone at Wizkids.

Ok, moving on from that. Dang. I want both those D&D boardgames now (and I cannot afford either at the moment!). Craig may have been able to stand his ground and resist the mighty Russ Wakelin Mind Juju...but, dang if it didn't work on me. One thing that really appeals to me about both games is the reported solo mode. I'd love to give that a shot!

I enjoyed the segment, but I think I would have preferred a straight up review of Wrath of Ashardalon. But, still a good segment.

Thanks for another enjoyable episode, folks. Good stuff as always.

The "discussion" with regards to the "How come I don't play certain games that I really like anymore" segment was absolutely best. I remember that there was one other episode where this also happened. My friend at office who sits behind me turned around to look at me as I'm almost falling from my chair in silent laughter (I listen to this at work with headphones).

I do understand the dominant species as name, but Rafe wins the name of the segment ... hands down. I vote for Hollywood segment!

In the great "funnest"/""dominant" debate I side with Craig for name - "funnest" is best, but I think I side with Russ for sentiment regarding the "dead status" issue..

By which I mean in my personal situation I think that no game is ever truly dead to our group. And even if it is, it might come alive again. But then my group is different to yours. We have different tastes, time, money, attitudes etc. I rarely play the same miniatures game two weeks in a row, unless its new and we want to "bed in" the rules better, or something. Campaigns never happen. Ever. We tried one LotR Battle Companies campaign 4 years ago and it died after 3 games. We've never even been tempted to try another.

But by nature we're gaming magpies. By circumstance we have collections dating back decades. By incluination we like to try the new hotness, but get bored before we get in too deep. And by situation we rarely can be bothered to play a game that lasts more than a couple of hours and more often than once a week.

Are we representative of anything more than ourselves? No. But I would say in my experience of other groups and folks built up over nearly 3 decades of gaming: when it comes to fantasy/sci-fi gaming, age demographics make a difference. Folks in their tens, teens and early twenties will get deeply into a game, and be really fixed on the one game only. As they get into their 30's and beyond, then gradually because of burnout, bad experiences, boredom or whatever, they will then spread their wings. They may find other games but they will rarely (not never, but definitely more often not) find a single game they get into in any real depth bordering on the obsession of their youth.

Sure there are the exceptions, but I think the norm is to tend towards magpieism with time.

And I don't particularly blame gaming companies for it (although one or two by their shenanikins surely accelerate the process! ), but simply the fact that I don't believe it is possible for one game system to engender that level of obsession for the lifetime of a normal human being. I think expecting it to be able to deliver a lifetime of obsessional gaming is beyond unreasonable.

But there you go. That's just my 2p.

Jeff Cope wrote:
I enjoyed the segment, but I think I would have preferred a straight up review of Wrath of Ashardalon. But, still a good segment.

Jeff: We didn't do a full review of Ashardalon because it shares so many of the mechanics with Ravenloft. If you go back and listen to our detailed Ravenloft review from Ep 64, then the Ashardalon comments, I think you'll have a very good feel for how both games work.

http://www.thed6generation.com/d6g-ep-64-the-warstore-weekend-interview-castle-ravenloft-detailed-review

Hope that helps!

Osbad: I think my gaming history matches your theory about age well. You may have something there.

RussWakelin wrote:
=Starcraft=
I'd definitely make a road trip to play Starcraft! Love that game. Email me the details.

Will do! Don't be alarmed if it takes a while to get the info, as a few upcoming dates might have other games planned.

Also: keep a look out for our local con "Carnage" at Lake Morey Resort in Fairlee, VT in November. I will (most likely) run an "all veteran" Star Craft game there on Saturday night, scheduled to run past midnight if it has too, with a strict "no newbies" rule (to avoid the 1+ hour of rules explanation).

Kind of off topic, but I just had an idea about an interview I'd be interested in hearing and that would be a great fit for the D6G. A lot of the plastic kits we've seen coming out the last few years have been a result of Renedra, and since these guys are ex-GW, I think it'd be facinating to hear about how they decided to breakaway and form their own company.

http://www.renedra.co.uk/history.html

Russ: FYI, they have Battlelore out now for the ipad. Its called 'Viking Lords'. I got it, but haven't played too much of it yet.

----


For the name on your new segment, I vote for: 'survival of the funnest' if for no other reason that it inherently tells you that you're dealing with a 'survival of the fittest' theme but has something to do with gaming because you've replaced 'fittest' with 'funnest'. 'Dominant Species' just means dominant species...there is no indication from the title of what connection it has at all to gaming.

As for the actual segment itself, when I heard the concept I was initially excited to see where it would lead, but then I felt you guys really wandered around the topic pretty unsure of where to go and ultimately I finished feeling like you never really tackled the initial idea.

The point of the question (as you read it) was what games do you no longer play because other games have taken their place, and why that has happened for those games. Therefore, the point of such a segment should really be to focus on specific games that have actually been replaced and identifying what failings they have that the game that replaced them has that 'beats them out'.

The problem is, Craig basically just listed a flow chart of games he and Karen have moved there way through without really identifying which, if any, of those games were actually 'replaced' by a specific other game (it didn't sound like that was the case for any of his games). Raef got side-tracked on the definition of what a 'dead' game was, again ignoring the concept of what games actually replace other games.

Russ, I think you approached the topic the wrong way by covering every 'genre' of game you own and identifying the 'top dog'. The reason this wasn't really that informative is because anyone who's listened to the D6G for a bit now knows what games are your 'top dogs' and why (you tell us why in your reviews and in 'achievements'). In many, if not most of your categories while you clearly have a 'top dog' there isn't always a game that it has replaced.

And that's where the topic lost its focus. If you do it again in the future you need to identify a game that you guys feel you no longer play because it was replaced by another game and then spend time examining what are the failings of that game compared to the improvements the replacement has that have earned its spot as 'top dog'.

So in other words, instead of focusing on the 'top dog' first and then trying to figure out if there's a game in the same category that it may or may not have replaced the segment should be driven first by the 'replaced' game...and not every category will actually have a 'replaced game' to talk about. So if in your co-op with traitor category if you haven't replaced any game with another, then you wouldn't discuss that category at all.

Ultimately I think I'm saying it should be a game specific topic rather than a category driven topic.


But obviously since I've spent all this time writing about it I think its a good concept and should definitely continue in the future anytime you identify a game that has been replaced by another game's superiority (like perhaps Ravenloft/Wrath over Descent).



Great stuff as always, guys! And I hope to see Craig & Raef at Adepticon.

I have been a listenner since the first episode and have loved every show. I would like to vote for "Survival of the Funnest". It is a nice nod towards Suvival of the Fittest with that Not Too Horrible humor added in.

I agree with Yakface about the direction of this segment. I feel like you focussed on the forest instead of looking at the trees. Pick a single game that is now way down in your stack of games and see why it has not been picked up and played in a long time. Most likely there is another game that you play instead when you want to play that type of game and you can talk about what makes that other game better.

Thanks so much for producing this amazing show and please keep them coming.

The_Wraith

RussWakelin wrote:Great feedback everyone.

A few more comments...


=Arkham Horror=
We do have some huge fans of this game locally. For me, I'm just not that big of a Cthulu guy, and the game plays too long for me for what it is. Mansions of Madness however...

Ah! I was going to ask you about that one. It is one of the few co-op games I've played; I'm not a huge board game guy, and really haven't played any since 2008 (I was living with a guy who had a HUGE collection, and we would get together with friends at the FLGS regularly to play them). I really liked the game's mechanics and setting, although TBH it has been about my only exposure to the Cthullu mythology.

I think Yakface has some good points about the wandering nature of the Survival of the Funnest/Dominant Species segment (I definitely prefer Survival of the Funnest, BTW!). However, I do think that once you sift through all the discussion on term definitions, you guys actually did OK at answering the question of why certain games weren't played. For example, there was the whole discussion on 40k vs Warmachine, and Craig's Flow Chart of Gaming Succession served to show that, in his case, games are subsumed due to a loss of variety after many, many plays.

I also have to side with Craig on his point about the difference between miniature and board games when it comes to calling it dead or not. Frankly, in my experience I think that there are actually three basic "categories" of minature games: With go-to games, you can walk into an average store and see it being played, find a game easily (that is, there are players that have their stuff with them), and get enough participation for a league/tournament. Back-burner games are games that have a following, but are a minority of the players and require some planning ahead to get a game going. If you hear someone say,"Oh! I play that game! But I didn't bring my stuff with me tonight," than you are likely looking at a back-burner game. Finally, there are dead games. These are the games that are pretty much never played, and are only ever mentioned in the past tense ("I used to play that..."). This is different from a boardgame, because as Raef pointed out with a boardgame, one person provides everything you need to play, where as with a miniatures game you generally need your opponent to have a fleet/army of their own (unless you are crazy like me and keep multiple factions for certain games ).

Note that these definitions are regional and even location specific; they may or may not have anything to do with whether or not the game is still available or supported. For me at my FLGS, go-to games include WH40k, WHFB, FoW, and Warmachine/Hordes. DW and FA tend to be back-burner games, while games like Blood Bowl and Unchrted Seas (which has been nick-named Unplayed Seas) are pretty much dead.

Anyway, keep up the good work guys!

PS - I still think you guys need to add a little PBS-esque blurb to the begining of the show when you list your sponsors, one that reads like, "And by, the Loyal Support of Listeners Like You."

Loved the episode. Another great job guys. Its great to see the podcast grow and expand.
I like the new segments and I think the "Green Eggs and Ham" for "Wrath of A" is a winner.
I think you all need to take turns at convincing the other two to try games you like and the other two are ambivalent about. Not your "big tickets" like Epic, Warmachine, Agricola, etc. but maybe boardgames you prefer or are excited about. To keep it from getting too deep.
Alternatively you could have to defend a controversial game against the other two "prosecutor/critics". Just a thought.

I'm down with the segment name "Survival of the Funnest" as well.
Mostly because shen I heard Russ say "DOMINANT SPECIES!!" I assumed there was a review of the new Chad Jensen game from GMT.
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/62219/dominant-species

I'll be looking for Craig and Raef at Adepticon!
I'll have my Flames of War Mid-war Germans in one hand and my Advanced Squad Leader binder in the other. What a weekend!

-Sawtooth

Wow, guys! Thanks for all the support on the name issue!

I honestly think Yak's pulled the pearl from the swine swill on this one! I think there probably IS a recurring segment in there somewhere if we focus on a single game and what took its place . . . excellent analysis!

Now it's off to try to a) remember how to play Epic while b) forgetting the pasting I got last night by the Necrons and c) write up an entire Deathwatch Adventure for a suddenly dwindling group of players . . .


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Um . . . and by all that I meant: "REALLY looking forward to Adepticon!!!!!"

. . . but someone just said we're supposed to get 8"-10" of snow Friday morning . . . ? <

Ruckdog wrote:
I think Yakface has some good points about the wandering nature of the Survival of the Funnest/Dominant Species segment (I definitely prefer Survival of the Funnest, BTW!). However, I do think that once you sift through all the discussion on term definitions, you guys actually did OK at answering the question of why certain games weren't played. For example, there was the whole discussion on 40k vs Warmachine, and Craig's Flow Chart of Gaming Succession served to show that, in his case, games are subsumed due to a loss of variety after many, many plays.

But my point was the stated goal of the segment was to look at games that got 'replaced' by other games (hence the name of the segment), as opposed to games you stop playing because you grow tired of them. While you could certainly do a segment on what games you no longer play and why you no longer play them, that's actually a different topic (and one that's less interesting IMHO).

When you have a circumstance where you basically stop playing one game because another game takes its place you're able to examine what essentially 'fails' in the first game that the 2nd game succeeds in, which personally is the kind of thing I'm interested in hearing about because when distilled down, those are the key elements to knowing what makes a great game the next time around when you're thinking of buying it or not.

I also have to side with Craig on his point about the difference between miniature and board games when it comes to calling it dead or not. Frankly, in my experience I think that there are actually three basic "categories" of minature games: With go-to games, you can walk into an average store and see it being played, find a game easily (that is, there are players that have their stuff with them), and get enough participation for a league/tournament. Back-burner games are games that have a following, but are a minority of the players and require some planning ahead to get a game going. If you hear someone say,"Oh! I play that game! But I didn't bring my stuff with me tonight," than you are likely looking at a back-burner game. Finally, there are dead games. These are the games that are pretty much never played, and are only ever mentioned in the past tense ("I used to play that..."). This is different from a boardgame, because as Raef pointed out with a boardgame, one person provides everything you need to play, where as with a miniatures game you generally need your opponent to have a fleet/army of their own (unless you are crazy like me and keep multiple factions for certain games ).

The other big difference between miniature and board games is that with a miniature game BOTH players are typically expected to bring an army to play the game with, so if one person doesn't show up with their army, then the game doesn't tend to get played...and that's what makes a miniature game seem 'dead' more quickly than a board game when some people lose interest. Because with a board game, as long as one person shows up with a copy of the game, he can theoretically entice others to sit down and play it. But with a miniature game, that can't happen unless a player brings along multiple armies, which isn't the 'norm' for those games.

I know I'm late to the party, but I just finished listening to Episode 75 and had a couple thoughts:

Concerning Craig and his lamenting the fact that his gaming group doesn't seem to have a "main" miniatures game that everyone is really interested in and always playing, he keeps going back to 10 years ago and all the times he played Warhammer 40k. I don't really have an opinion as to the merits of 40k, because I don't play it, but from what I know about you guys, and this may be incorrect, but when everyone was playing 40k, you weren't playing anything else. The only game there was, was 40k. As time passed, and new games came out, there wasn't a "dominant" game anymore because there were so many other games to play. More choices means that there is no single "go to" game anymore. Because of this, I don't think it will ever be like the "hay-day" of 40k.

Also, and this may be a possible solution to Craig's desire to play primarily miniature games, your gaming group/store should really separate "miniature gaming" night from "boardgame" night. I know that you all work and have families and whatnot, but at least at my local store (Zombie Planet in Albany, NY) there is one night for miniatures, and one night for boardgames. This is pretty strictly enforced and works out well. The people who want to play minis show up on Tuesday, and the people who want to play boardgames come on Fridays. Everyone knows this, so no one is disappointed or frustrated. At the store I go to, miniature gaming is so popular that it is divided even further with Warhammer 40k on Tuesdays, Warmachine on Saturdays, and Malifaux on Wednesdays. If your group/store is willing to do this, I really recommend splitting miniature gaming away from boardgaming.

Concerning Russ's comparison between Ravenloft/Ashardalon and Descent, while I know that Ravenloft has many cool things about it, for many of the reasons Craig listed, I just can't get into those games, and much prefer Descent. For me, I was just bored playing Ravenloft. Maybe I didn't play it enough, but the characters just seemed boring and weren't nearly as customizable as in Descent. Everything just seemed "floaty" and abstract. Descent seemed much more real and "tangible" for whatever reason. Maybe the new game changes this, but I don't know.

Also, I know Russ says that Ravenloft is closer to a roleplaying game feel than Descent because it's cooperative, rather than competitive the way Descent is, but to me, Ravenloft seemed too... programed and sterile because there was no Overlord. Playing Ravenloft was almost like playing with a math program (which is maybe why Russ likes it.) If X happens, do Y. If Z, move A. I know that's one of the limitations of having a completely cooperative game, but one of the great things about playing a roleplaying game, is the imagination of the Dungeon Master, being able to do things that throw the players for a loop and are unexpected. The spark of human creativity. This never happens in Ravenloft. It's the same thing happening over and over again. Move, explore a tile, attack a monster, rinse repeat. Descent may be a competitive game, but at least with a human Overlord, you have unexpected things happening. The Overlord may be trying to win the game, but he or she is also running the dungeon. I'll take a human Overlord with creativity and the ability to spontaneously change and throw things at the players over a robotic cooperative game anyday.

Also, depending on who the Overlord is in Descent can change the game entirely. I can be the Overlord and play a very monster-heavy dungeon, even within the preset scenarios provided in the game. My friend on the other hand loves making trap-heavy dungeons and playing through one of his sessions becomes more about surviving and avoiding the traps than it is about killing all the little baddies. Same game, different Overlords, completely different experience. You don't have that at all with Ravenloft because there is no Overlord. There is no brain behind the game. No imagination, or creativity, or anything else that separates a human from an equation. That's why I don't particularly enjoy Ravenloft, because it's missing that "creative" component, and why it will never replace Descent. Yes, Ravenloft is cooperative, but by having no one running the dungeon, I might as well be playing D&D against my Excel spreadsheet.