Wednesday, June 22, 2011

My Induction To Gaming, Part 2

There were two elements that introduced me to the various board games and card games that you will see me review in this blog: The first was during my research in game design.  The second was my exposure to the other games my co-players in Vampire: the Eternal Struggle also played.  Let us return to my life story, shall we?

Back in high school, during my Magic: the Gathering days, I was driven to game design by two things: a desire to make a card game on The Matrix movie concept, and a desire to make a card game based on real-time strategy computer games such as Starcraft and Command and Conquer, which were both popular at the time.  While neither of these ideas took off during those amateur years (though I still go back to the latter idea to see if I can develop it further), the research did me very good and exposed me primarily to websites that I found invaluable for both the design process and knowledge on board game trends.

One website was The Games Journal (http://www.thegamesjournal.com), which produced articles on game theory, game design, and various game reviews, among many others.  Though it is still up until now, it hasn't been updated for nearly six years.

Another was the Board Game Designers Forum (http://www.bgdf.com).  It was (and still is) a collective for sharing design ideas.  It is a complete resource for all things, from laying out your concept, to publishing, and to general tips and guides that you may miss if you are a beginner in the design field.  They often held contests on designing games as well.

The third is RPG.net (http://www.rpg.net).  Though much inclined into role-playing games, it was also the first website I encountered that had reviews for board and card games which included pictures.  RPG.net is still up today, as well.

From late high school and early into college, I did produce a couple of card game prototypes during my self-proclaimed "game designer" period.  These are both simple and quick card games.  What really surprised me was that both played something like a game, and not some convoluted set of instructions with thin, badly-designed cards.  The first, simply called Links, is a card game where you connect different cards with numbers and symbols so that their symbols (which are located on each corner) match, and you create a set of linked cards.  You add the numbers on each card, and the first to have 50 points wins.  I still have my prototype for this, which were hand-drawn on index cards.

The second was Hoarders, or at least that was its name before I abandoned it.  This one was about playing various token (jewel) hoarders in order to collect enough of those tokens to meet your secret goal. After five years, the rules and demo cards can still be found online via this link: http://www.angelfire.com/realm2/anti_gods/

Eventually, I focused more on playing games... and studying, of course -- this was college.  That was when I found the Vampire community that played at Katipunan Ave., Quezon City.  As you may have read from the previous entry, Vampire (a.k.a., Jyhad) is the game that I was dying to play, but before could not find the other players who were into it.  It wasn't as popular as Magic, but had been there for almost as long.

These same players also introduced me to other games.  Some I already knew from online game reviews and magazine articles, but never had the opportunity to try them because they were not usually available in local hobby shops.  There were others, too, which were unfamiliar to me. One of those games that certainly caught my interest was a Western-themed card game from an Italian company, titled Bang!  Through Bang, I explored more games that will eventually result to collecting these things called "designer board games".  It is known as such because the designers --like in comic books and other creative endeavors-- are credited and are revered for their work.

Next week, I will give you a semi-elaborate description and review of Bang! and tell you why it got me, and everyone I've introduced it to, hooked.  And perhaps, you too.

See you soon!

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