tabletop games – PopCult Reviews

Solo Tabletop RPG Review – Thousand Year Old Vampire

Prologue
I did not grow up playing tabletop roleplay games. If you regularly read this blog, you know that I was homeschooled from Kindergarten through High School and then attended a private Christian college. If you know the type of people choosing to homeschool their children in the 1980s, you probably have a good picture of what I was dealing with. My parents did not make a lot of sense, and now I can reflect on it and realize they were just reactionaries. We have Focus on the Family and some of its satellite publications coming into our home. My parents regularly listened to Rush Limbaugh. I remember we also tuned into G. Gordon Liddy’s radio show. It’s pretty ugly when you look back on it.

Not a Review, but an actual thing you can download

So I have been playing with the ChatGPT AI and making some incredibly stupid, yet hilarious things to entertain me. This weekend I came up an exceptionally stupid yet entertaining thing, Oh, Hello the Tabletop Roleplay Game.

If you are not familiar, these are two characters created by John Mulaney and Nick Kroll that are so weird and awful and funny. They have had an off-Broadway show, an on-Broadway show, a p’dcast, and have appeared all over television. I made a game where you get to play as them. That’s fucking hilarious to me. You can read it and download it below. Let me know if you play it.

oh hello the ttprg Download

PopCult Podcast Episode 1

This is our first real podcast episode. This episode’s sponsor is Anchor who will help you make your podcasting dreams happen easy & for free.

In this episode, I talk briefly about the absurd pearl-clutching over cancel culture in media at the moment.

My lovely & talented wife, Ariana joins us in the studio as we go over our Top 5 Relationship Movies.

I review the recently released Justice League Snyder Cut.

And Ariana returns to talk about CollegeHumor’s Dimension 20 tabletop series and some of our own experiences dabbling in the hobby.

We would love to get your comments or feedback which you leave here on the blog or as voicemail on my Anchor podcast page.

Game Review – Villagers

Villagers (2019)
Designed by Haakon Gaarder
Published by Sinister Fish Games

I’ve been quarantining myself during this pandemic since mid-March. I have literally only left my house once a week since then to the grocery store. Otherwise, I am occupying space in my house reading, writing, watching films and playing games. Villagers was a game I backed on Kickstarter back in 2019, primarily out of the beautiful minimalist art style and my love of playing city-building video games. This wasn’t exactly what I thought it would be, but I ended up loving it nonetheless.

Game Review – The X-Files Board Game

The X-Files Board Game (2015)
Designed by Kevin Wilson
Published by IDW Games

After watching through ten of the best episodes of The X-Files this month, I decided to crack open a copy of the board game from IDW I’d bought a few years ago. I remember hearing good reviews when it originally came out in 2015, and I snatched up a copy. As so often happens when you buy a board game on a whim, it sits on your shelf for a while until you finally find the time to play it. The X-Files Board Game turned out to be quite an excellent experience, a game I definitely want to play again and again to explore the tactics and mechanics going on under the hood.

Favorites of 2017 – Video Games & Tabletop Games

My Favorite Video Games and Tabletop Games of 2017

popcult2017

Video Games

Dead Cells
From my Steam Summer Sale write up on this one:

“Dead Cells is an Early Access title, but one that overcomes the stigma that label can sometimes bring. Like a side-scrolling Dark Souls, Dead Cells drops your nameless protagonist in the middle of an island dungeon with no knowledge of how they got there. As you run, jump, and kill enemies, you collect the two currencies of the game: gold and cells. Gold helps you purchase items in the shops and unlock treasure doors during play. The cells are spent at the end of each stage to upgrade and unlock new weapons and abilities. When you die you start over with your primary weapons, but everything you unlock carries over from playthroughs, able to be discovered and purchased. Addictive, smooth gameplay.”

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Origins 2017: Scythe

Scythe (Stonemaier Games)
Designed by Jamey Stegmaier
Art by Jakub Rozalski

scythe

In an alternate history, the continent of Europa is recovering from the effects of the Great War. The Factory once provided the armies of this land with powerful mechs but has now shut down, hiding its advanced technology behind its doors. The nations of Europa want this tech and begin a campaign against each other to become the most prosperous of nations in the world. To do this, they will need to gather resources to unlock greater and greater achievements, always taking note of their military might and popularity amongst the people.

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Origins 2017: Belle of the Ball

Belle of the Ball (Dice Hate Me Games)
Designed by Daniel Solis
Art by Jacqui Davis

belle I have a soft spot for deceptively simple card games, those games that come in small-ish boxes and seem to just be a few cards and maybe half a dozen tokens. It doesn’t look like much, but upon playing them, you start to see the depth of strategy lying underneath. Love Letter was like this for me, and subsequently, Sushi Go among others. Belle of the Ball is another game that falls into this deceptively simple category.

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Origins 2017: Friday

Friday (Rio Grande Games)
Designed by Friedemann Friese
Art by Harald Lieske and Marcel-André Casasola Merkle

friday

As someone without a regular gaming group in addition to homebody tendencies, there are a lot of tabletop games that just aren’t worth dropping the money when 3+ players are needed. My wife is also busy with other things when home so isn’t always available to play some of our favorites. So, I began to look for games that would work with a single player when I came across Friday, a game made for ONLY one player. I was a bit skeptical, but the $12 price tag at Origins made it affordable enough to take a risk.

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Origins 2017: The Networks

The Networks (Formal Ferret Games)
Designed by Gil Hova
Artwork by Heiko Günther and Travis Kinchy

Damn, I love this game! The premise of The Networks is that each player is running a fledgling television station. Each network has a minuscule deck of three starting shows with zero viewers, one star, and one advertisement. The game is played over the course of Five Seasons, or rounds, with each season 1, 2-3, and 4-5 bringing different television shows with different requirements and benefits. At the end of each season, income/expenses are calculated, and viewership (the main scoring mechanic) is tallied. At the end of season 5, whichever network has the highest number of viewers wins.

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