This picture hurts me, on the inside. Where my feelings should be.
So after a 9 hour workday and a 3 hour drive home I sit at my computer without a single topic rattling around in my head. With this in mind, I have decided to take the easy way out and post another list of things I like. This time it shall be fun rules light board/card games. Woohoo! (woohoos not included) Continue reading
Do you love being a Slum Lord and driving everyone into bankruptcy? Perhaps you prefer attempting to save the world from simultaneous E. coli, Bird Flu, and Gonorrhea outbreaks? Or is a night of inadvertently insulting your friends in the name of fun your cup of tea? If you answered yes (or no) to any of the above, then do we have the podcast for you! Join us this week as we discuss traditional vs. niche board games whilst narrowly avoiding certain death! It’s Robert with the knife in the podcast studio on this week’s shiny new episode of Monkey in the Cage.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:02:35 — 28.6MB)
Posted in Art, Board Games, Books, Card Games, Comics, Food, Gaming, Movies, Podcast, Pop-Culture, Table Top Games, Television
Tagged 13 Assassins, 4E, Alice in Wonderland, Apples to Apples, Arkham Horror, Armie Hammer, Axis & Allies, Balderdash, Battle Masters, Ben Templesmith, board games, Castle Panic, Castle Ravenloft, Chutes and Ladders, Clue, Cranium, Dark Shadows, Del Shannon, Dominick Cruz, Doritos Locos Tacos, Dungeons & Dragons, Forbidden Island, FOX Sports, Gaming, George Takei, God's Playground, Happy Dance, Helena Bonham Carter, Heroquest, Johnny Depp, Joss Whedon, Legend of Drizzt, Loaded Questions, Lords of Waterdeep, Luis Cardenas, Mia Wasikowska, MMA, Monopoly, Much Ado About Nothing, Munchkin, Mutant Chronicles, Niche Board Games, Opera, Pandemic, Pictionary, Power Grid, Runaway, Scrabble, Seige of the Citadel, Settlers of Catan, Shadows over Camelot, Star Wars, Star Wars 3.5, Taco Bell, The Avengers, The Cabin in the Woods, The Downfall of Pompeii, The Editor Strikes Back, The Hunger Games, The Hunger Games Trilogy, The Lone Ranger, The Ultimate FIghter, The Walking Dead Board Game, Tim Burton, Topher Grace, Traditional Board Games, Trivial Pursuit, UFC, Uno, Urijah Faber, Wizards of the Coast, WonderCon 2012, Wormwood, Wrath of Ashardalon, XXXopoly
In this day and age of online gaming and social media, we geeks have it sweet in the ability to jump on our PC’s or consoles with people from around the world and wreak havoc upon AI foes or one another in any number of settings no matter what time of day it is. Whether it’s banding together for a raid in World of Warcraft, or failing miserably to save the world in a game of Pandemic, one of the best gaming experiences a gamer can have is when teamwork with you closest friends brings sweet, sweet victory or amusingly humiliating defeat.
Join us this week as we shotgun blast your ears with our numerous (and we mean numerous!) experiences with Co-Op gameplay. From video games to board games to tabletop RPG’s, we hit it fast, hard, and chaotic, just like Leeroy Jenkins himself. Plug in and listen up, because the Co-Op memories just keep coming!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:05:48 — 30.1MB)
Posted in Podcast
Tagged 5th Edition, Alan Moore, Alcatraz, American McGee's Alice, An Idiot Abroad, Arkham Horror, B.P.R.D. Summer Camp, Bad Dudes, Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance, Battlefield 3, Battlestar Galactica, Beat Down Boogie, Before Watchmen, board games, boardgames, Borderlands, Borderlands 2, Breaking Bad, Call of Duty, Castle Ravenloft, Champions of Norrath, Co-op games, cooperative gaming, Count Strahd, Crystal Chronicles, CSI, D&D, D&D Next, D&DXP, Dark Horse Comics, DC, DC Comics, Deathspank, Double Dragon, Drag Queen, Drag Race, Dungeons & Dragons, EverQuest, Fantasy Summer Camp, Final Fantasy, First Encounters, Forbidden Island, Four Swords, GameCube, Gauntlet, Ghost Recon, Half-Life 2: Episode 2, Head Key, Heroquest, House of the Dead, J.J. Abrams, Jedi Power Battles, Jeremy Crawford, Joe Hill, Jorge Garcia, LARP, Leeroy Jenkins, Lego, Little Big Planet, Locke & Key, LOST, Mario Galaxy, Mario Kart Double Dash, Mario Warfare, Mike Mearls, MMORPG, Monte Cook, Mutant Chronicles, Ninja Summer Camp, Nintendo, Pandemic, Pen and Paper RPG, Phantasmagoria, portal 2, Red Dead Redemption, Rock Band, Roleplaying, RuPaul, Sackboy, Sam Neill, Sarah Jones, Secret of Mana, Shadows over Camelot, Shedu, Sparkles the Wizard, Star Wars Episode 1, tabletop rolepaying games, Tales of the Black Freighter, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Hobbit, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, The Last Night on Earth, The Legend of Drizzt, The Legend of Zelda, The Lord of the Rings, The Matrix, The Simpsons, Themed Summer Camps, Turtles in Time, Uncharted 2, Watchmen, Wizards of the Coast, World of Warcraft, WoW, Wrath of Ashardalon, X-Men, Zombie Apocalypse, Zombies
About a year ago when randomly stumbling on the internets, I came across a post about a group trying to increase interest in board gaming. They were asking people to board game in public and were calling it the Play in Public campaign. The original post seems to have been taken offline, but there are still remnants of the campaign online, including a wordpress blog named pipcampaign.
Now the reason I bring up this nearly dead campaign now is that I finally decided to give it a go and bring a group of my board games with me out to a local market that has tables set up for people to eat and listen to the always terrible cover band. It was here, surrounded by aging bikers that I decided I would attempt my first public play with Forbidden Island.
Forbidden Island is a fairly light and fluffy game as is, but for some reason playing outside with some sammiches (yes, sammiches) and cheese, it made the experience that much more enjoyable. Maybe it was playing in the sun for once that gave it that extra shot of vitamin D (aka death to pasties).
Sadly we were only able to get through one game even though I had brought a bag full of them. The wind started to kick up and throw our cards everywhere. It was fun while it lasted and is something I would definitely do again. Maybe next time I will hit a bar and play a few rounds of Munchkin. I would suggest everyone give playing in public a try, it can add a new element of enjoyment to the game and who knows, maybe you will meet a few new people and introduce them to a new board game.
Posted in Board Games, Card Games, Gaming, Pop-Culture
Tagged board games, board gaming, Forbidden Island, Games, Gaming, Munchkin, pipcampaign, play in public, Tom's Farms
If you are like me and you hate doing anything until the very last minute, ideas for readily available presents might be difficult to come up with. So with that in mind I present you:
Board/Card Games:
Forbidden Island is a co-op game with a very simple premise. You work together with the other players to try and capture idols and escape the island before it sinks. While the rules may be simple the gameplay can become very frantic and group strategy is required. This is one of the few board games out there that can turn a non gamer into a diehard in one session. You can generally find Forbidden Island at Barnes & Nobles or your local game shop.
Munchkin is one of those games that can break up friendships. Each player is given 7 cards which include monsters, classes, items, weapons, player/monster enhancements, and various one-off boosts to players and monsters. The goal of the game is to reach level 10. You do this by fighting monsters to make sure you gain levels and screwing the other players to make sure they don’t. Cheating is frowned upon, but highly encouraged. You can find Munchkin at Barnes & Nobles and your local game shop.
Table Top Games:
I’m trying to keep this list with items that are fairly easy to find 2 days before Christmas, but I just had to add this one. Paranoia is a table top game where the experience of the single adventure is greater than the whole. Everyone is a resident of an underground society controlled by a power mad self-aware computer who sends his subjects off on suicide missions. This is a game where you will die. Throughout the game players are given a number of clones that can replace their character if/when they die out in the field. If you survive until the end of the adventure one of the other players may convince the computer that you are a traitor and you will die. You will probably only be able to find Paranoia at your local game store.
Now full disclosure here, I have never played a game of Shadowrun, but I have read a number of editions of the rules books and supplements, and have even started fleshing out a campaign that never got off the ground. Shadowrun is cyberpunk at it’s core. If the person you are buying for likes Neuromancer (“the archetypal cyberpunk work”) or Snow Crash (My favorite book of all time), this is the setting for them. Shadowrun is set in a dystopian fascist future where corporations rule the land and runners are the hired help that do anything from corporate espionage to straight assassination. Within the game, the character classes stretch the gamut from nature loving, technology hating shaman to “I live in the matrix” Decker (hacker). You might be able to find this in a book store, but honestly a local game shop is your best bet.
Video Games:
Of all the AAA games released within the past 3 months Assassin’s Creed Revelations seems like the one most likely lost in the mix just due to the other major franchises released the week before and week after it. Assassin’s Creed Revelations continues on in the same vein as Brotherhood where it is a continuation of the characters we already know and enjoy vs. an actual sequel like Assassin’s Creed 2 was. You should be able to pick up Assassin’s Creed Revelations at Denny’s at this point.
I know I’m going to get flak for this, but Skyrim is the biggest game of the year. At this point even if you get this for someone who already owns the game they will think well of you. Skyrim is an open world role playing game (RPG) where you can create a character tailored to your exact specifications, whether it being a dual-summoning mage with a conjured bow to a two-handed axe wielding barbarian that eats flowers to heal. This game is beautiful to look at and easy to lose hours to. If you do pick this up, I would suggest buying either the Xbox 360 or PC version of the game as the PS3 version has some issues when you start getting deep in to it. You can pick up Skyrim at any of the big box electronic retailers or smaller video game shops.
Matt Fuller: @JustinSuzuki Next thing you'll be telling me is that I can only bring brand new gaming books to the table each week... Matt Fuller: Need to scratch that #Gaming itch, but don't want to leave the house? Check out #LUGCon this weekend! https://t.co/E9VY5aqY4Z 
Monkey In The Cage: Need to scratch that #Gaming itch, but don't want to leave the house? Check out #LUGCon this weekend! https://t.co/8tL1PEpPV8 Matt Fuller: RT @MonkeyInTheCage: Episode 87 - Arrested Development http://t.co/ZMyFB1s1aC #Bluth #TV #Netflix #MITC #Podcast 
