November 2017 Newsletter

Hello!

CMRN here. I have had one of the busiest months in my entire life! So I don't have much Excellent Newsletter Content for you. Luckily, Danni has a great review for you below. I will give you all the really good words next time.

Please accept episodes 36 and 37 of Mages and Murderdads as a consolation prize. Our XCOM playthrough is also still going! We have some really great one-off content as soon as I have a free moment to edit the video together! 

Danni's Corner

Fury Of Dracula:

Fury of Dracula is an asymmetrical competitive map control game. One player is Dracula  and the other three are Vampire Hunters. Dracula knows where the vampire hunters are, but the vampire hunters don’t know where Dracula is unless they are in the same location. The Hunters are trying to kill Dracula, and Dracula is trying to get to 13 points. Dracula gets points by doing Dracula shit - biting people, making vampires, causing mischief. Fury of Dracula is awesome because it’s highly narrativizable.

An interesting part of boadgame analysis is examining how intertwined the mechanics are to the theme. A game of Takenoko - where the theme is tending a garden and wrangling a panda - can’t be summarized in narrative terms. Here’s what I mean:

Ok, so I was one of the gardeners tending the Emperor’s garden. I made… I forced the panda to eat three bamboo shoots, and then I… created these particular patterns in the garden, and I also grew bamboo in a certain order. There were three other gardeners doing these things, but I did them better. That’s why the Emperor chose me - that’s why I won.

It just doesn’t work. Takenoko is heavily thematic, but only at a birds-eye view. It’s more accurate to say that it’s mechanics are draped in an aesthetic. You can’t use the theme to create a fictionalized narrative of the events of the game.

Fury of Dracula is the exact opposite:

I was Dracula. I began in Austria and worked my way East. Eventually, one of the hunters stumbled on my trail and the hunters all bee-lined for eastern Europe. The hunters completely ignored the plots I laid in Greece and the Balkans - they smelled blood. A hunter engaged me and wounded me severely. I used a bit of misdirection - delaying a hunter that was close to Castle Dracula, even though I was much more South, to convince the hunters that I was headed to Castle Dracula for convalescence. By the time the hunters found out I wasn’t in Russia, it was too late - I was already making a break back into Austria. One hunter stood between me and western Europe, and I hospitalized her for her troubles. The plots I had laid in the Balkans had begun to mature, wreaking havoc throughout the region. From then on, it was a futile search for me in rural France - by the time the hunters found me it was too late - Eastern Europe was in flames.

Everything in Fury of Dracula is capable of being rendered into a narrative. It’s narrativizable. Every event card, every move, every confrontation with Dracula - it’s all so damn thematic that sometimes you forget that you aren’t playing a damn straight up RPG. 

It’s a real fun time.