By sfnftate / July 5, 2024
Shall We Play A Game? – YES!
Or, How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Escape Reality
One of my favorite things is playing board and role-playing games – especially over the last few years. My wife, daughter and I have spent many, many hours playing board games, while I have run role-playing games for my son and his friends that have run through the night and into the early morning hours.
Some of our most-played Board and Role-Playing Games are…
- Terraforming Mars: A card-based board game about making Mars inhabitable. It has a great sci-fi theme that is infinitely replayable.
- 7 Wonders: A board game where you get to build a civilization, with a focus on huge projects like building the Great Pyramid or the Great Wall or…
- Scythe: A board game set in an alternate 1920’s with mechs. It has amazing art, with mechs and airships.
- Trail of Cthulhu: A role-playing game where you get to fight monsters and lose sanity. It is based on H. P. Lovecraft’s weird tales of creepy horror.
- Dungeons & Dragons (4th and 5th Editions): The granddaddy of role-playing games. Fight the monsters, grab the loot, and go from zero to hero.
Our favorite board and role-playing games have a few things in common. They are either cooperative, like the role-playing games, or at least direct inter-player conflict is minimal. Even in 7 Wonders, where military and naval power are a way to get victory points, other avenues such as science and commercial are at least as good. In Scythe, the players do have giant 1920’s-style mechs and pets like giant wolves and tigers, but winning a combat reduces your popularity which is a huge source of victory points, so frequent combat can end up hurting players.
We also like board and role-playing games with strong themes more than abstract ones. Building domed cities in Terraforming Mars or the Hanging Gardens of Babylon in 7 Wonders just feels so much better than collecting cubes or whatnot in more abstract games. Finally, even the boardgames feel like role-playing games to some extent. I have been known to announce my corporation’s actions in Terraforming Mars like they were press releases – “We here at the Thor Project are excited to announce that we are establishing a colony on Phobos…”.
Why We Love Board and Role-Playing Games
I think we love board and role-playing games so much because it is a great way for us to spend time together. We load up some snacks, a tasty beverage or two and set forth slaying some dragons or turning Mars into a comfy place to live. We are not a super-competitive family, so it’s just a nice time hanging out and having fun. Some families watch football – we just save the world.
