On Three Games Part II

My parents collected games.

There were walls of board games in my house. I was an early reader, but being able to read, doesn't necessarily mean understanding. I had a friend in college who talked about misunderstanding 'save versus poison'. Do you take the poison and keep it for later? 

There were so many games in my house, but for the first half-decade I was just looking at the pieces and the cards and played my own games. Then, when I was older, I got to play the games as they actually were meant to be played.

Three Games of Sinless

Stop Thief!

Stop Thief was an early favorite. It had a colorful board, covered with various shops, little plastic detective men, and, a 9-Volt, electronic device that tracked the location of the invisible thief.

You moved around the board, the device would tell you if you heard footsteps, an alarm or broken glass.

This is. . . extremely similar to dungeon play, even more so then the contemporary board game Dungeon! and HeroQuest.

Dungeon did have a bit of active monster behavior, they would 'take over' their

room if attacked by the player. The interesting thing in Stop Thief! is of course, that both the player and the opponent are on the board and searching for you. There was an even earlier game, Venture! on the colecovision, and it was a pretty weird-you were a little dot. And when you entered a shape, it was a 'room' filled with treasure and monsters.

But there's a timer, take too long to kill the monsters and grab the treasure, and the most terrifying noise known to man happened, and a *giant* version of the little sweeps you had to avoid when you were a little dot instead of a smiley face with a bow, turned into giant tentacle monsters that kept you on a timer. 

This-I mean, a megadungeon zone or floor is a board. It is the dungeon game. You can move 6"12" inches (spaces) on your turn, and the unseen monsters move, and every monster roll added another to the board. (engagement distance is 3"-18" away, and most dungeon rooms are somewhere in the neighborhood of 4-8" big). 

In an operation, you infiltrate hiding from the defensive forces, until they become alert and engage with you. The main game-the operation.

Thunder Road!

This is the second game. It's a game with two boards with wasteland style street decals. The boards lay sequentially. You start on board one, and move down the wide open street to board two. You roll dice to move your team of vehicles. You can attack the other vehicle teams (Three vehicles and a helicopter). The first vehicle to reach the other side of the second board causes you to lift up the back board, getting rid of all the pieces and placing the first board in front, making the second board the rear one, and the remaining vehicles racing to the end of the board. The game ends when all players but one are eliminated. 

There are-I mean you roll your dice to move. Do you move? do you focus on

gunning? Do you run one piece ahead and hope it doesn't get blown up? So many good choices.

It was this model we developed our travel (overland) game. It is a staple, and frankly shameful that modern/crime/sci-fi games don't model car chases. It is critical to the genera. 

It is the section where you travel-via caravan, underground, from place to place, while under threat. It is this game that gives distance and weight to choices. It is what keeps it from being a static labyrinth. Here is not there.

Chaos Overlords

Finally, the city adventure. In D&D the city adventure is just a place to rest, recuperate, train, and shop.

Take some guesses what you can do during a sector turn in Sinless.

But unlike just having downtime activities, there are various resources players can own and control. 

Chaos Overlords was a computer game in the early 90's that involved colorful gangs fighting for control over territory in a megacity. Once taken over, they could be developed, improved, and provide benefits to your gang of thugs. 

Early D&D was no different, it in fact suggested you use a board for a completely different game for wilderness survival!

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Hack & Slash 

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