What I Played Today: October 24

Nanuk, Innovation, Battlestar Galactica (the RPG)

It was the 6th anniversary of my local gaming store, and circumstances caused me to not show up until about two (had to do laundry), so when I showed up all the food was gone and only the regulars were still hanging around. So I played some games with them, why not?

First was Nanuk, which is a bluffing game similar to Liar’s Dice, but with a larger crowd. Everyone makes bets based on how many of a given animal you think you can catch. Once someone is convinced the bet is too risky, they can say they think the party is doomed, and then everyone around the table divides into two teams…those who think it can be done, and those who don’t. Everyone on the go team plays cards from their hand to try to get the total, and then cards are drawn from the deck. If a bear comes up or there aren’t enough of the animal in the draw, the party is doomed, and all those not stupid enough to go along split the pot. Otherwise, the party wins the pot. It’s a nice twist, moves quickly, and easy to learn, as well as pretty good with lots of people. I had fun, and I also won, so.

Then a game of Innovation, which went alright, although it was a bit slow. Some of the higher level cards are intense, and there was a bit of a problem earlier, where a player went all tower cards and made demands that drained everyone’s field, which was a bit of problem early on. There was also an odd case where two players got to share a dogma that went on forever, and it was really hard to track. So…it’s tough with all new players and four people, this may be better with two players.

Then it was on to RPG night, and this time we played Battlestar Galactica! …the roleplaying game. This worked off the Cortex system, which is nice and simple. We played a small team of survivors of the events that kicked off the Battlestar Galactica pilot. I played an engineer who suddenly got pulled onto a project to investigate an odd corpse that was discovered flirting with cylons, while my brother was a security officer who happened to get assigned to the same secret bunker. The bombs go off, the third character, a Marine, falls out of the sky, and it becomes a case of trying to survive. I was really excited to play a character who knew the secret before everyone else, but couldn’t reveal it and slowly unraveled his mind. He spent a good amount of time clutching his head afraid that every NPC was a cylon. It was fun.

The only issue I took was that without the Battlestar Galactica dressing, this was exactly the same setup as the zombie RPG we played three weeks ago under the same DM. It’s odd that he gave us the exact same build to work off of…I hope he has some other ideas.