Showing posts with label Buffy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Buffy. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 27, 2016

New Buffy the Vampire Slayer Boardgame Coming from Jasco Games and Lynnvander Productions

Lynnvander Studios, a game design studio founded in 2005 by Thomas Grofton, has recently announced that they will be producing a number of licensed board games with significant cache in the geek community in partnership with Jasco Games. One of the first games to be released will be a new Whedonverse inspired game entitled Buffy the Vampire Slayer: the Board Game.



When designing adventure games inspired by heroic fiction or tropes, designers tend to choose between one of two models. The first model, and that chosen by games like Heroquest and the majority of role playing games, is to have one player take responsibility for being the Game Master/Storyteller who controls the actions of all of the villains, adversaries, and non-central characters in the narrative. The second model is to create a cooperative game where all of the players take the role of characters central to the narrative. In a cooperative game, the players work together to overcome the game itself. While there has been a recent increase in the number of cooperative games available, these kinds of games existed earlier in the hobby with one of my favorites being Games Workshop's classic Warhammer Quest board game. Either form of game play can be rewarding, but one of the advantages of cooperative game designs is that they allow for more natural implementation of solitaire game play.

The Buffy game being designed by Lynnvander studios is a fully cooperative game for 1 to 6 players that should be able to be played in about 40 to 60 minutes. The designers have decided to have the players take the roles of Buffy and her friends as they defend the town of Sunnydale from an onslaught of vampires and demons, even as the players must also work to prevent a big bad’s plot and open the Hellmouth.

By the description of the game, it seems that the Lynnvander productions design will be closer in mechanics to Fantasy Flight Games' challenging Lord of the Rings card game than to classic Warhammer Quest. Both of those games are excellent, but each presents a different gaming experience. This is all speculation on my part based on the descriptions presented, but either way I am excited to see what a new Buffy game brings.

The game should be available from Jasco this October, just in time for Halloween.

Thursday, November 15, 2007

An Evening with Tim Minear

As a recent Variety article points out, "there is an image war raging during the WGA strike." So far, it appears that the writers are winning with about 63% of the fans supporting the writers and only around 7% supporting the studios. This means about 30% of the people don't care, but that is a talk for another time. I don't want to get into how the underlying philosophical concepts what the writers are asking are central to the existence of modern democracy, at least not here. Ask me over a Guinness, and I might be able to ramble for a good hour about the topic.

Needless to say, the studios seem to be reacting to the lack of public support. For example NBC is showing their charitable nature and giving fans the opportunity to buy television show props with the proceeds going to charity. See how that works, you buy Steve Carell's watch from NBC and the United Way benefits. NBC makes dismantling a show a charitable act.

Hmm...maybe they don't need the writers after all, that's pretty creative.

I'm kidding about the NBC dismantling the show part. Given that some of the items are signed, I am sure that the auctions were probably already scheduled. But I am not at all surprised that NBC would use this as an opportunity to shift the PR battle in their favor.

The only way that writers, current and future, are going to get an equitable outcome from the strike is if they win the PR battle. That's why Bill Cunningham, Shawna Benson and I did a Geekerati episode with Rob Long last Monday. That's why we will be interviewing Tim Minear about the strike tomorrow night. It's important to know why the writers are striking and why those 30% who don't currently care on way or another really ought to care. It matters. We're talking about the development of a new medium here, and that means that the norms established today will be lasting.

We will also be discussing the fans who support the strike, like the organizers of fans4writers.com. If you want to know more about the strike, or if you are a participant in fans4writers, listen in (starting at 7pm) and give us a call (starting at 7:15 or so) at (646) 478-5041 to join in the conversation.

Come listen to Bill, Shawna, and me on Friday night at 7pm, as we chat with Tim Minear. Maybe he'll even discuss how this is affecting his upcoming projects (MIRACLE MAN and DOLLHOUSE), but no promises. While you're waiting, make sure you visit Tim Minear.net. You can even read the shooting script for the Firefly episode "Out of Gas." For free. Legally.

How cool is that?


If you want even more information about the strike, you can play or download the Geekerati interview with writer/producer Rob Long below.