We met up with an online friend for the first time last night as he was curious about the tabletop gaming hobby. And while newbie nights tend to limit us to only particular types of games, what was a bit of a surprise is that he requested to try out Alice is Missing, which is a silent text-based RPG. But we couldn't dive straight into that game as our first activity, so we made the rounds of some gateway games.
Newbie nights tends to mean playing a lot more games as we end up playing comparatively simpler games first in order to ease them in. We started the night with an old staple - a very number-centric card game called 6 Nimmt! (or these days Take 5). We followed that up with Spots, which is a more recent game acquisition that is super adorable and lots of fun. And then we played a round of Sushi Go Party!, although we only used the core Sushi Go! rules in order to keep things simple.
Alice is Missing turned out to be a very intense 90 minutes of play for us with timed clue cards that come in at particular times and a lot of improvisation. There were only three of us and that was already a lot to juggle across two individual chats and one group chat with all the action. Our thanks to Telegram for helping to facilitate our little adventure. The resulting story was pretty good, although there were bits that I wish the game played a more active role in helping us as players craft the ending of the story.
After the heaviness of that game, we needed some lighter games to shake things off. We started with Mooncake Master, which is always a fun experience for players of any experience level. The level of randomness is a little high but it works for the game. Then we kept things light and played a round of Don't L.L.A.M.A. Dice, which is a faster version of the original game. It's still so much fun and I know we're going to get a lot more play out of it.
Then we tried a harder game as a sort of last hurrah. This ended up being Dead of Winter, which is always a good balance of strategy and a decent narrative. We kept missing the Crossroads cards for some reason, which just stresses how rusty we were respect with this game. We totally lost that one and again needed some consolation gaming after. We ended up with an old favorite - Guillotine, which we literally haven't played in years. It was a lot of fun and I think this was a nice reminder to bring it out more. Our final game for the night (just as the sun was rising) was a smaller Laukat game Artifacts, Inc. It's not as random as something like Megaland but it's easier to dive into than their other releases.
Easter Sunday itself was pretty light for us. I woke up a little late for our final family book club meeting for The Bee Sting (which we didn't absolutely love) before we move on to The Three-Body Problem. Tobie spent time with his mom and I worked on O Bar videos all afternoon while continuing to go through episodes of Stargate SG-1. When Tobie did finally get home, we went for a short walk around BGC to end the weekend on a relatively healthier note and that's about it.
I hope you all had a rejuvenating weekend. You all deserved a good break.
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