Video games, board games, card games - whatever. I'm interested to know what you all have been playing recently.

I've been playing a lot of D&D recently. My players have just delved deep under an ancient keep to save an archaeologist from undead Tomb Spiders. I'm currently planning for this weeks game where they will hopefully encounter the giant spider brood mother.

On the video game front, I've been playing through Duke Nukem 3D. That's a game that's certainly made the test of time.

-LTADnD

I've recently played really good game of Secret Hitler, so I wanted to let you know about it. If you don't know Secret Hitler, it's great game and I'll briefly describe it below. You can play it online, for free, without ads at secrethitler.io (opensource). You can as well buy it, or even just download pdf, print it and play with paper cards!

Secret Hitler summary

Game for 5-10 players, tabletop. Players are divided to Fascists and Liberals. One of fascists is Hitler. Fascists knows who is who, but Liberals don't know anything. There is chancellor and president, players vote them and they elect laws (president receives 3 laws, 1 discards, 2 passes to chancellor, which discards 1 law and the other one passed). Fascists win, as 6 F laws passed or Hitler was elected as chancellor with 3 or more F laws. Liberals win, if 5 L laws passed or Hitler was killed. If you want to know more, watch some gameplay at YouTube, it's really interesting game about lying to people and manipulating them. And if you will be interested in the game, we might play it together online :-)

I was a Fascist. Right on the first turn as president, I got 3 Fascists laws and I selected Hitler as chancellor - I had to because of order and it would be suspicious not to do so. So I passed him the laws and he of course had to pass Fascist law. But then, he peaked (because 3rd F law passed) at top three cards and lied about it (said FFL, was FLL). Because of this, everyone, after few turns which revealed he lied, started suspecting him. When the liberals had 4 laws passed, I tried as hard as I could to defend Hitler - he just missclicked (no, he would told us!), you know it. After about 10 minute discussion, my propose was rejected, someone else elected as Chancellor and Liberals won the game.

Leave your own stories in comments and be sure to tell, if you would like to play this with other people here, it's wonderful game. And if you would like to, I have other stories - for example when we (IRL) played Secret Hitler to 3 AM, and at the last but one turn, everyone went extremely suspicious and we played one turn almost hour and half (I don't lie about this, I started to measure it after 20 minutes of discussion).

I play boardgames weekly, mainly what is called euro games that focus on building engines to accumulate points by the end of the game and typically at the heavier end of the gamut too. (The word heavy is used to describe games that have either long, complicated rulesets or complex strategy, or both. It's a somewhat subjective term.)

Trickerion is one of my top-ten games, if not my favourite. It's very thematic (Victorian era magicians competing for fame by performing tricks), the blind worker assignment mechanism it uses is very tense and it's possible to undermine an opponent's strategy by learning a trick they were clearly aiming for, or removing the materials they need from the marketplace. Best of all, there is this very dramatic end game crescendo as everyone rushes to the theatre to perform their most spectacular tricks.

That said, the rule-set is pretty heavy and the theatre scoring is a bit fiddly, so I couldn't recommend the game to someone who hasn't played many modern boardgames already. But if you're of a technical/financial disposition or have experience with middle to heavy boardgames already then I'd say dive in there whilst you can.

The original game was launched on Kickstarter in 2015. The new edition Kickstarter includes options for the expansion, the upgrade kit or the full deal with everything including the original game.

(I'm not affiliated with the game in any fashion, just enjoy playing it, though I did once witness the designer playtesting the expansion at the London on Board Meetup group and had a short chat with him.)

Most of my friends and my husband love board games- the more complicated, the better! My whole life, many board games have given me pretty bad anxiety to the point where I pretended I hated them rather than admit I was just scared.

Over the past few years, I have found a few games I don't mind playing- mostly cooperative (Sentinels of the Multiverse, Betrayal at House on the Hill) or anonymous ones (Cards Against Humanity, Jackbox Games). I still have a hard time playing strategy games like Catan or Ticket to Ride; games which involve guessing what others will do like Rook or The Resistance make me want to die.

A lot of times, my friends just want to sit around and play board games, and I'm trying to build up a list of games I like to play so I can join in. Any advice for getting used to them/learning to play in advance, or games that are fun for serious board gamers, but still sort of low pressure?

Thanks!

Hey all, I'm a board game designer named Adam Wyse and I just wanted to share my latest project that went live on Kickstarter this morning!

A little bit about me; I'm a former software engineer who now works in the board game industry full time. I have a few published games (Head of Mousehold, Masque of the Red Death), and many more that have been signed and will be coming out over the next year or two. I work for Roxley Games doing logistics and development. If you're a fan of modern tabletop games you've probably heard of Santorini or Brass.

Anyways, Mayday Games is publishing Poetry Slam; a word/party game for 3 to 8 players (10 if we reach the stretch goal). It's all about writing a word based on a prompt, then coming up with a short poem that allows other players to guess your word. Each player loses a letter each round that they can no longer use in later rounds. Coming up with your word faster will earn you more points, but you will lose more valuable letters! It's a strategic and hilarious word game that you can play with a big group - it makes for a pretty fun and unique experience.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/maydaygames/poetry-slam-a-beatnik-3-8-player-party-game

I did up a full how to play video here a couple weeks ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_Y-0FBCjyM

One of the cool things that Mayday is doing is a referral system. If you back the game you get a referral link. If you get someone else to back the game using your link, you get a free playmat. Whoever refers the most people will get a cool prize pack!

If you have any questions about Poetry Slam, board game design in general, the tabletop industry, or Roxley Games, I'm happy to answer! I hope you'll give the project a look!

Edit: The project was cancelled because it kind of stalled in the middle, but the game is still going to be produced! It will be available at Origins board game convention in June, and then in retail shortly afterwards. If you are interested in checking out a gameplay video, we recorded on at my local game store last night: https://www.facebook.com/sentrybox/videos/10156328694703428/