Fnorder: Ah, you went to GenCon as well, then? Just got back today myself. How was the True Dungeon deal, anyway? The expense of that one has always kind of put me off, along with worries that it might require encyclopedic D&D knowledge to get through. Is it rules-heavy, or do they play it fast and loose?
Anyway, fun times myself. Played in a bunch of LARPs, ran one myself, played in some tabletop RPGs, and ate some good food. A few board game comments from what I played, since board games are a little easier to review than individual games, and who knows, someone else might some day play/buy them-
Here I Stand: Wars of the Reformation - Interesting game, but I think it's a little too biased towards the "simulation" end of history rather than the "game" aspect. As in, the English always want to go Protestant, the Ottomans are going to get locked in a war with the Habsburgs and will want to commit Mediterranean piracy rather than really conquer Italy, the Protestant Reformers always spawn in historically accurate locations, France gets practically no benefit from conquering Germany or Spain but is strongly encouraged to meddle in Calais/northern Italy, etc. Why can't the Reformation, say, have spread into (rather secular) northern Italy rather than France? Maybe Jean Calvin was a Spaniard in your game. Also, turns are sloooooow. We only managed to finish two turns, though granted this was our first time playing & setting up.
Also, the tournament scenario (starts on turn 4 of the game rather than turn 1) reaaaaaaaaaly screws over England, who I played. Basically England has done absolutely nothing in the first three turns; Henry hasn't even bothered asking for a divorce from the Pope yet. Since which kids you get as you move down the wife track is random (no getting Elizabeth for sure off Anne Boelyn), this is incredibly bad since a major mechanic of the game is having Henry marry different wives while hoping for a decent heir. The Pope refused to grant me a divorce, Henry was busy conquering Scotland rather than getting married on my first turn, and by the time the English Reformation would have started on the next turn we didn't play, the Papal player had already set up a Jesuit college in London. Yeah, England is screwed in the tournament scenario (though France & the Protestants don't come off too great either). The Papacy won our little mini two-turn game after surprisingly beating the Protestants in some religious debates.
Kingsburg: This actually seemed like solid fun. It's a light, fast game based on bribing the king's advisors for cool stuff to build your settlement and withstand the hordes of barbarians/demons/zombies that attack it every once in awhile so that you can eventually win the king's favor. Hard to say how well it holds up.
Arkham Horror, the more recent printing: A bit luck-based, but amusing and flavorful and good for a break from "competitive" games, as this one is the players vs. the boardgame. It's always fun to run around getting sucked into alien dimensions and having to preserve both your health and your sanity. Arkham was saved thanks to good luck on drawing Elder Signs from the deck (the Elder Signs being able to *permanently* close an area from new gates), but it was a darn close thing for a time with monsters in a conga-line about Arkham and there being 5 gates open (if we'd let it get to 6, the doom track insta-maxes out and the Great Old One is summoned). I think we made it a bit easy on ourselves by picking Azathoth as the Ancient One the cultists were trying to awaken; for those unfamiliar with the game, some Ancient Ones are quick to summon but less scary in combat if successfully summoned, while others take awhile but are much nastier if they make it through the gate. Azathoth has the flavorful final battle of "Azathoth awakens and destroys the world. YOU LOSE." But he's actually one of the easier ones, because he takes forever to summon, giving more time to run around and get a win based on sealing the gates in the first place. An enemy like, say, Cthulu, probably would have made this considerably nastier on us.
On the downside, the bus was slow getting out of Pittsburgh for some reason and never made up the time, meaning I got in an hour late. An hour is not normally a big deal, but since this was a 9:30 AM->4AM trip from Indianapolis->NYC theoretically, getting in at 5 AM and having to go to work in three & a half hours was a bit less sleep than I'd hoped.
