In the world of tabletop roleplay, many of us play games filled with gods, monsters, and magic. Our characters explore ancient crypts, hunt dragons, and live in a world of power and mystery. Knowing the fantastic lives of the people we play, you can't help but ask the question: why do we turn our imaginations off when it comes to food? Why can every adventurer be found with a leg of turkey and a mug of beer at an unassuming tavern?

In this article, I'm going to talk about a few different ways we can spice up food in our games.

Part 1: Eat Local

Even today, what's on your plate is probably very different from the country next-door. If we imagine a world without our level of global trade or without easy refrigeration, this effect only becomes more pronounced.

In our games we often act as vagabonds, moving from one community to the next. When we arrive in a new place, there are a lot of different ideas we might want to consider:

• What's in season? If we're arriving during harvest time, we're going to see a very different spread of food on offer than we would in the dead of winter. Is there more hunted meat in the winter? Does the community rely on preserved goods…

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Join Kathleen and Kurt as they play through a full game of Honey Buzz, a new game from Paul Salomon and Elf Creek Games.

COVID-19 Note: Kurt and Kathleen are married and live together, which is why there are no masks used in this video.

Read Kathleen's review of Honey Buzz.

Buy Honey Buzz at Elf Creek Games' website:
https://elf-creek-games.myshopify.com/collections/honey-buzz

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Now, don’t get me wrong. You may have read the title of this article and thought I was going to straight dunk on a whole swath of digital games. And you’re damn right I am. But for the sake of argument, let’s take a look at some of the reasons why this style of digital play has become popular.

Why Are Physics-Driven Game Systems Popular? And Also, Uh, What Are They Again?

Depending on how much of a nerd you are, you may be familiar with the idea of a physics engine. If you aren’t, I’ll sum it up for you as quick as I can: video games need rules to tell them how objects interact. If this sword is dropped, what happens? If you crash into this wall, what happens? If you throw a wheel of cheese at this child, what happens? The physics engine is responsible for setting the rules…

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In Soulgivers, two opposing groups of souls lurk in the ether of space. Each of these factions is desperate to retrieve the pulsing, shimmering Fragment: a mysterious power that will stop their people’s decay and return them to their immortal lives.

I could keep going — the rulebook starts with a three page short story describing the lore — but underneath all its glitter and chrome, Soulgivers is an abstract game at heart. This may be because of its minimalist design or may be a natural consequence of how the game works.

How the Game Works

Soulgivers is a two-player game of tactical movement and deterministic combat. Both players control a team of units called Soulgivers, each with their own unique powers and abilities. Both players are racing to retrieve a piece called the Fragment and bring it back to their home territory. The first team that can get the Fragment all the way home wins. Design-wise, Soulgivers shares a lot of DNA with Capture the Flag.

The game is played on a grid, with the Fragment starting in the center. Each team has two places to enter the board called Portals (blue and orange), which is also where players must bring the Fragment to win. The…

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In Fort, everyone competes to build the best fort and get the most points. You start the game with a deck of 10 cards, each showing a kid with their own powers. Most of the kids do stuff that helps you build your fort: grabbing resources, recruiting more kids to join your crew, and using those resources to upgrade your fort. You can also earn points during the game through card actions and at the end through your own unique scoring condition.

How to Play

Fort is a deck-building game: you start with a small deck that you’ll add new cards to over the course of the game, but unlike most deck-building games, there is no cost for new cards. Every…

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A colossal monument sits at the crest of a hill. Its architecture reimagined what came before, but its success would inspire countless imitations. The monument became famous around the world. Years later, it still stands today.

I am talking, of course, about 7 Wonders.

7 Wonders is a card drafting game designed by Antoine Bauza in 2010. Known for its broad player count and short runtime, 7 Wonders was honoured by the Spiel des Jahres Jury with an Expert Game of the Year award (Kennerspiel des Jahres) in 2011. In our long-form article examining the most important games of the 2010s, 7 Wonders came in (fittingly) at #7. So what made the game so special?

[caption id="attachment_23693" align="alignnone" width="633"] This is what you thought I meant, right?[/caption]

Before we can get into that, let’s take a look at how it plays.

The Rules

The premise of 7 Wonders is simple: each player represents a different ancient civilization working to build the framework that will advance their society. Among these structures are institutes of learning, centers of trade, and of course their Wonder: a civilization-specific monument that gives each player an overarching goal to work towards. The game lasts for…

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“This world-building storytelling RPG will impress everyone with its streamlined rules, breezy play, and spirit of friendly collaboration. As players work together to build a magical city, i’m sorry did you say street magic provides all the guidance they’ll need to tap into their imaginations and create something truly fun.”

And yes, all of that is true. But I had already fallen for the game the second I looked at its itch.io page, because:

1) Ooh, pretty colours, and
2) I love titles like Fall Out Boy songs and capitalization like bell hooks.

...And as much as I do love the title, we’ll abbreviate it to street magic in this review for ease of reading. Let’s take a look at how the game works.

Concepts: Laws of Magic

Street magic offers a pretty simple play system. The game is played with no Game Master: players share creative control, taking turns adding to the story.

On a player’s turn, they must contribute a new element to the city. The player describes a Neighborhood, Landmark, or Resident, jotting down some notes on a cue card. Each of these features…

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In this review anything that might be considered a spoiler is hidden in a collapsible window with a spoiler alert on it. In all other ways, this review is spoiler-free.

The two games in the Adventure Games series, The Dungeon and Monochrome Inc., are cooperative standalone games for one to four players in which you discover and engage in a story played out over three chapters. Both games play almost identically, but there are some unique elements in each, which will be discussed later in the review.

[caption id="attachment_20280" align="aligncenter" width="730"] The Dungeon and Monochrome Inc. games and their components.[/caption]

Each Adventure Game comes with Room or Level cards (A), Character cards and figures (B), Adventure cards (C), Mission cards and Ending cards (D), an Adventure Book, Turn Overview cards, and two plastic bags. Don’t look through any game material (cards and the Adventure Book) until the rulebook or the game instructs you to do so.

Adventuring

As previously mentioned, players are working cooperatively in the Adventure Games and playing through a story, with the choices they make affecting and changing the course of their game. While…

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Buy Staka on Amazon.

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Title: Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms
Authors: Geoffrey Engelstein & Isaac Shalev
Illustrator: Daniel Solis

When I still worked full-time as a board game teacher, there were a few games we used to play. I’m not talking about games we played on purpose, like Catan or Ticket to Ride. No, the games I’m talking about were a natural product of our job. One of these games was called I Found a Piece on the Floor and Must Now Figure Out What Game It’s From. Another was called Organizing These Box Contents in a Way Our Customers Will Actually Carry Forward. But the most common game, in my experience, was this one: What is the Half-Remembered Game This Person is Describing?

Here’s an example of what that game looked like.

Teacher: Do you folks need any recommendations?
Customer: That would be awesome, actually.
T: Cool! So I can understand your tastes a little bit, what are some games you’ve played and liked?
C: Oh! There’s this… um… I don’t remember the title.
T: That’s okay! Can you describe it at all?
C: Uh…there were roads, and —
T: — was it Catan?
C: shocked…

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The last decade has seen more board games designed and manufactured than any other point in history. From the smallest card game to the most densely packed box of Kickstarter excess, today’s tabletop world owes so much to the games that came before.

The entries in this list have been selected for reasons as diverse as the games themselves, but efforts were made to highlight innovation, popularity, and games that had a particularly strong impact on those that followed and the industry as a whole. Please join us as we explore The 100 Most Important Board Games of the 2010s, and why they matter in 2019.

• 100 to 91
• 90 to 81
• 80 to 71
• 70 to 61
• 60 to 51
• 50 to 41
• 40 to 31
• 30 to 21
• 20 to 11
• 10 to 1

100 to 91

#100: Imperial Settlers (2014)

Imperial Settlers, a reimplementation of Ignacy Trzewiczek’s 51st State (2010), is a civilization and engine-building card game in which players control one of four factions to build their empire. The goofy and inviting artwork in Imperial Settlers has certainly helped the game’s appeal, in the very least to disguise…

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What makes you want to pick something up and hold it in your hand? There are a lot of great games out there, but only a few make you want to reach out and grab them. In this Top 6 list of Irresistibly Touchable Games, we cover games that have components that really elevate the experience. And while these components may not be necessary for the gameplay, they definitely make the game better. Whether it’s their weight, texture, or the nice sound it makes when you put the piece down, something about them makes it impossible for players to leave them alone.

Azul

In classic euro-game fashion, the players in Azul are doing a relatively mundane task: tiling a wall. Players will collect Starburst candies plastic tiles, adding them to their player board to complete the tiling pattern. These pieces work perfectly both thematically and mechanically. They’re easy to slide across your board, and tons of fun to knock into the middle of the play area. The tile pieces are so loved in Azul that people who own the first edition of the game have actually gone out of their way to get the new first player marker that was an upgrade from cardboard to the same material as the tiles after the first edition.

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I like to play board games. Sometimes it is hard to explain why I like to play them because people think that it is funny that I play games even though I am a grown-up. Sometimes it is hard to explain why I like to play them because the games I like can be very hard to understand. I wanted to make something easy to understand.

This is why I like to play board games, using the ten hundred most used words*.

1. It is fun to think.

I like to think. Thinking is something I do every day. This is because I have to think to keep being alive, but also because I have to think for my job, to get money, which I use to keep being alive.

Other people who have to think for their job sometimes tell me that they do not want to do more thinking when they are not doing their job. I understand. If we did the same thing all the time, it would not be very fun to do anymore.

But I like to think, even when I am not doing my job. I like to think about new ways to fix pretend problems. I like to look for new and special ways that pretend problems can be fixed. If I am…

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