Fury of Dracula, Small World and Meteor

[lathany]

Yesterday, _alanna and al_fruitbat came over for board games and dinner.

We kicked off by playing Small World. It's a game about taking as much territory as possible for as long as possible. You get points for each area controlled by your race for each turn. You can change races, putting the old one into decline and taking a new one. Races consist of two elements - an adjective and a fantasy race. I started with Mounted Giants, moved on to Commando Amazons and finished with Forest Trolls. I thought it was fun, fairly easy to pick up and with nine fixed turns it's a finite length (a couple of hours) without much variation.

Dinner was curries (king prawn and coriander along with duck and sausage) followed by chocolate pots. Along with book recommendations (I now have a list of six new books/authors to try).

After dinner we moved on to Fury of Dracula. This first came out over twenty years ago, but I've never come across it before. One player (bateleur) plays Dracula, who is trying to hide, whilst creating new vampires and taking out the players whilst the other players (us!) are trying to locate and kill him. Our game involved a huge long march all over Europe after him - he never quite got completely away and it took us ages to actually kill him. The game lasted for hours and was utterly gripping. However, I've been warned that it's the most epic round of the game that any of the other three had seen - so I recommend it enthusiastically, but with a touch of caution!

Finally, I have a game of Meteor to prepare for. I've promised last week's party some updated character sheets - I'll probably do some for next week's party as well although after the next session. The two parties have started writing notes to each other. Which could be described as friendly... but could also be considered a written form of sparring.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_alanna/]

Really enjoyed both games (and curries!). Thanks for having us over :)

Btw, you have me hooked on Recettear now :P

[secretrebel.livejournal.com]

I'm really interested in Small World. It sounds a lot like patchwork universe.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_alanna/]

We could bring it next weekend if you like?

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

I used to play a lot of Fury of Dracula back in the day, but I was completely hopeless at it. When playing Dracula it seemed the investigators had all the advantages; but when playing an investigator, fndiong Dracula seemed impossible. Suppose this means it's well balanced!

[lathany.livejournal.com]

Thanks for having us over :)

It was great to see you. We must do it again.

Btw, you have me hooked on Recettear now :P

:-) I can live with that.

[lathany.livejournal.com]

I guess it is a bit.

[lathany.livejournal.com]

From what the others said, Dracula usually loses. I gather from Wikipedia that the rules are slightly different than they were, though.

(Although, as al_fruitbat pointed out, the combat is a bit random.)

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Mm, reading the article, it does look quite different. Not being able to kill hunters either by wounds or by biting is a pretty significant swing against Dracula! -- although it makes sense to not have killed players forced to sit out of the rest of the game.

The new mechanism for Dracula's trail of encounters sounds like an improvement though, makes the game and theme tighter.

And probably getting rid of the minor victory options was sensible, they did muddy the waters a bit.

I quite like the combat because, like scissors-paper-stone, it allows for psychological dominance of cowed opponents by 'reading their minds'. This can be quite effective in the context of a horrific adversary like Dracula... Maybe al_fruitbat is too rational to be so swayed though :-)

[lathany.livejournal.com]

although it makes sense to not have killed players forced to sit out of the rest of the game.

I didn't see the older version; but this sounds spot on. It would have been frustrating to be killed early (as Mina nearly was).