review Archives - The Wetlander

November 10, 2020

I grabbed a retail version of the newest member to the Munchkin empire, Munchkin Dungeon. I love the original card game (minus the randomly placed sexism sprinkled throughout), and it’s a frequent go-to at my house. The name is obviously a huge franchise, and I was looking to get another game. Dungeon just came out, and has also gotten a lot of expansions to kick off its release, and I was excited to give the game a go.

So I was pretty disappointed when the game came with some pretty notable holes in it. For starters, the game definitely does not come with enough dice. It comes with 6, but even by the third round of turns we were rolling sometimes 8 or 9 dice each player. Of course, plenty of games do this (I’m looking at you, Fantasy Flight). I was totally willing to shell out some extra money to get a few packs. But they’re not even available for sale! They were only available for Kickstarter backers, with the leftovers being sold at conventions and other special events. I’m not sure what the logic is here, but there’s some pretty obvious money to be made by making some extra dice available.

THE RULEBOOK

But the biggest problem is the fucking rulebook. It’s one of the most confusing and incomplete rulebooks I’ve read since getting a copy of the OD&D rules. It’s terribly specific about certain terms without offering any explanations until later in the book. Why is the “Welcome to Munchkin Dungeon” section in the middle spread of the rulebook? That seems like a page ONE kind of thing.

It’s also missing sizable chunks of rules from the pages. For example, look at Threat Cards. These are the cards that other players will play to make you miserable, in true Munchkin fashion. The rules explain how to use them, their turn order, and how to gain them. Thing is, it doesn’t mention how many of these cards you actually START with. It’s not in the Set-Up section of the rules, or anywhere in the rules for that matter. By reading the back end of the rules summary, we see that players can “refill your hand to 4 Threat cards.” From this, we can assume that players start with 4 Threat Cards at the beginning of the game. But these inferences have to be made throughout the book.

It was so bad that CMON (the game’s co-publisher) had to release an FAQ pamphlet that clarified some of the missing or vague rules. It’s clear that they were trying to make a compact rulebook, but I’m confused why they opted to keep in the long examples that took up half the pages instead of offering clearer rules.

It really does kind of feel like reading a board game version of OD&D. The games have always been quirky homages to the classic version of the game, but I’m sure this kind of comparison isn’t quite what they were going for. In true Gygaxian fashion, the rules seem to circle around the actual point without ever actually spelling it out. (For the record, I’m a fan of Gygax’s prose. I just think an editor would’ve helped.)

GAMEPLAY

But even once you finally unpack the rules a little bit and get what they’re trying to convey to you, the game kind of slogs. What’s nice about the original Munchkin is the fast paced, raucous shitshow that makes up most of the game. Players constantly interjecting and changing the course of a player’s turn. But Dungeon just takes too long. There’s a lot of turns taken in orderly fashion, and because of the constant need for clarifications, it took my friends and I about 7-10 minutes to complete a single player’s turn.

In addition, some of the designer’s decisions don’t make any sense. There’s an area of cards for “Available Loot” when you clear a room, but I don’t see why that’s any better than having a player just draw a card from the stack. It makes the game slow down while the player tries to figure out what the card is actually saying, and then which one is better. I could see the designers making that decision if it felt more accurate to clearing a room in a dungeoncrawl, but it doesn’t. It feels like a shopping trip within a dungeon.

Thankfully, the game of Munchkin Dungeon has some truly good gems in it. The core mechanics of the game actually work together pretty well, and with a few adjustments (and a printout of the FAQ pamphlet), the gameplay sped up a lot and it felt a lot more like the Munchkin boardgame I was hoping for. Once I changed it up, it went a lot more fast-paced and felt more like the GM-less D&D it wants to be.

Do I recommend people buy this game? If you really like Munchkin, you’ll dig it. Again, you really do need the FAQ sheet, and you’ll probably still be a little confused, but it helps a lot. Plus, if you’re willing to do some digging around BoardGameGeek and other forums, there’s some good fun to be had here.

But if you’re not already a fan of Munchkin, I don’t think this game is going to win you over.

HOMEBREW RULES

Below are the homebrew rules I added or changed to the game. These should help to streamline play and add some chaos to the dungeon.

Kick In The Door Phase

(1) Keep unexplored rooms face down. When a player enters a room, flip it over and resolve the room. This echoes the actual exploration that happens in dungeoncrawls.

Get Into Trouble Phase

(2) Players can play Threat Cards in any order, instead of clockwise order.

Resolve The Room Phase

(3) If you do not defeat the monsters, leave the threat monsters in the room you fought them in.

Loot & Rest Phase

(4) After you clear a room, take the old room card and replace it with a new one. Add the old room card into the stack.
(5) Don’t use the available loot area, it doesn’t make any sense that you get to go shopping in the dungeon. Just grab a card from the deck.
(6) You can use potions to heal hearts. For each potion spent, remove one broken heart token.

Fighting Monsters Together

(7) If you are in a room with another hero, you can fight together to defeat the monsters. You must get the hero to agree to help you (probably by bribing them with loot or coins.) Add their roll results to yours, and distribute rewards accordingly. Any hero helping you does not get fame for defeating monsters.

April 15, 2021

“Sleepaway gives us long hazy days, chilled summer nights, kids screaming and chasing fireflies, crackling campfires, and a gaunt, cruel monstrosity forever hiding just out of sight, always asking, “What do you do next?”’

Sleepaway is a masterpiece of a game by Jay Dragon. It’s as heartfelt as it is absolutely heart-wrenching, and that’s exactly what it sets out to be.

The game is set in the wooded summer camps of our youth. The camp is a haven for the young campers who come here, isolated by the outside world. It’s a wonderful metaphorical (but also literal, in Jay’s case) reference to the safe spaces that are so essential to marginalized communities. Players act as camp counselors and help the kids have fun, discover themselves, and stop them from wandering a little too far into the woods. Because as you soon find out, Sleepaway is actually a horror game.

This camp that is so special to the campers and counselors, is haunted by a horrible monster known as the Lindworm.

As Jay writes,

“The Lindworm is a shapeshifter, or so the stories go; a creature that flays the skin of humans and hides within. As counselors of this summer camp, you’ve each been traumatized by the Lindworm, in your own ways.”

So right from the get-go, the game asks you to provide a safe space for campers to grow, while simultaneously making you VERY aware of the terrors that lie just at the edge of the woods around you. It’s a dichotomy that in and of itself makes for very good roleplaying material.

But I think it’s so much more than that. This game is a wonderful example of how to make a system work to its advantages. It’s written in beautiful prose that makes you feel each pang of the heart as you read it.

Because I think this game is so powerful, and frankly I could talk about it for a long time, I’m breaking the review up into several sections. I’ll try and keep them as succinct as possible.

TONE

Jay’s writing is some of the most evocative and inspiring that I’ve seen in a tabletop game. It’s full of this very warm, nostalgia for a time while still being very upfront with the pain that comes with it. It feels like it’s simultaneously looking to the camp as something to be loved and feared all at once.

But even more than that, reading this game just makes you excited for all the possibilities that could happen when it comes time to actually play.

For example, here’s a list of details that you define when you create the summer camp.

Where the fire pit used to be.
Where the frogs used to sing.
Where the faerie houses used to be built.
Where the path used to go.
Where you used to sneak away to watch the sunrise.
Where you realized you weren’t straight.
Where the oldest cabins are.
Where the witch was spotted.
Where kids kissed when you were young.
Where you confessed your childhood crush.
Where the great battles of youth took place.

I couldn’t help but get a little giddy while reading through it. I can imagine each of these places in my mental image of what camp looks like. How each possible location might change the whole camp itself.

And EVERYTHING is like this.

Reading this book in its entirety feels a little bit like reading through a whole menu from front to back. There are so many options that you feel a bit overwhelmed by it all. But you know what you’re gonna get when it’s time to order.

I was nervous I was gonna get that option paralysis the first time we played. But as soon as the other players and I started talking about what we were thinking, it became pretty clear which options from this list weren’t going to make much sense for this version of our camp.

And that’s where the magic tone from Jay comes in.

Each option, each detail feels so powerful and so vivid that you can just picture it in your head. But it’s not all so overstimulating that you can’t figure out which one to pick. All these options and choices are really just suggestions. They never feel so crucial that you HAVE to pick one of these. They’re all substantial enough and different enough to create their own unique version of camp without feeling incomplete or lacking.

Another example of this is in the Character Sheets. Instead of a bunch of stats or weapons, the Characters are defined through their emotions, their needs. It feels so much more visceral to know things like your “Childhood Fear” or “What You’ll Never Live Down.” And the definition that comes with it is exhilarating. Each option offers a different angle of your Character, and each makes a bold statement as to who you are, who you can become.

GENDER & SAFETY MECHANICS

But the best part about the Character Sheets is the section where you describe your gender.

In most games this isn’t even a question. There’s this (unfortunate) assumption in many circles that you play whatever gender you normally identify with. This, of course, has several implications that are worth untangling. For starters, roleplaying games are a wonderful opportunity to explore gender identity. It’s a place to negotiate the world and how you want to exist within it, without the prejudice that too often comes with it. Stripping that to the simple default of your “typical” gender is presumptuous at best.

Sleepaway takes this assumption and blows it the fuck up.

There’s very few genders here that could be construed as a simple binary. Genders like the Lifeguard’s “Nice Boy” come to mind. But when it’s placed next to “Eagle”, “Castle”, and “Lighthouse in the Darkness” you can see that it probably isn’t as cut and dry as it seems.

Which strikes me as being exactly Jay’s point.

By writing a section like this in each playbook, Jay is prompting everyone who plays to have a discussion about gender. And not just a casual descriptor, but a real dialogue about the meaning of gender expression and what that can be. Past simple binaries or even a spectrum.

This makes even more sense when you’ve read the various sidebars and safety mechanics in the How To Play section.

If there was any doubt about Jay’s viewpoint, it’s made very explicit here.

From Jay’s sidebar on the use of pronouns and how some Characters might use them, to the sidebar about the need for respect in the inherently hierarchical relationship between Counselor to Camper, Jay says so much about the respect actually needed for one another in order to play this game.

It seems it would be impossible to misconstrue Jay’s point.

“Sleepaway, like the summer camps it’s based on, doesn’t care whether you’re cis, trans, or something more tangled. Gender here is more abstract and raw. Sleepaway cares how your gender shapes you, and what pronouns you use at camp.” On the other side of the page is a long list of pronouns, with the corollary of adding more if you have different ones in mind.

It goes so much further than so many other games, and it’s one of the most simple but effective tools a creator can put in to be more inclusive and explicitly affirming.

Jay does also put in Lines, Veils and Highlights, which helps facilitate BEFORE you start playing and bring up potentially upsetting or disturbing topics in play. Tools like these are fairly common in many indie RPGs, and it’s always nice to see them, given how simple they are to implement.

THE SYSTEM

Apocalypse World (2nd Ed) - lumpley games | DriveThruRPG.com

The game works with the Belonging Outside Belonging/No Dice, No Masters system by Avery Alder, an emotionally-driven game system that uses a token of economies to make Moves. The system is designed for use in games that focus on marginalized communities. It itself is an iteration of the Apocalypse World system by D. Vincent Baker and Meguey Baker.

Sleepaway is a case study example of a game being written to suit the system it is for. This game would be totally playable with things like hit points, gear, etc.

But that is so not what Sleepaway is about.

Sleepaway plays into the advantages of the BOB system by trusting the players with figuring out the nitty-gritty details of health and gear. What it cares about are the EMOTIONS behind that stuff.

The game leverages everything it has at you and wants to see you succeed, fail, lash out, and rejoice in all of it. How did you FEEL when you saw the body? How did you ACT when you needed to run away?

I have some deeper thoughts regarding the Belonging Outside Belonging system that I’ll hopefully be getting into in an upcoming post soon. So I’ll spend the rest of this section focused on the deck mechanics for the Lindworm, which is pretty unique to Sleepaway.

The game uses a standard deck of cards. At the beginning of the session, someone is secretly chosen to act for the Lindworm. The game is very clear that you are NOT to act as the Lindworm, under any circumstances.

When someone makes the Weak Move “Invite the Lindworm to act upon the group,” everyone closes their eyes. The player who must channel the Lindworm picks up the top 3 cards of the deck, and selects one. This is the Lindworm’s play.

The cards range from severity based on the suit and number of the card. Each card has a set of cues, things to react to in the fiction of the game. From the mild but evocative Hearts, to the horrifying and mysterious Clubs, all the way to the absolutely nightmarish Spades, each card is so perfectly written that it never feels redundant. Likewise, if the last action was a Spades card and the next one is a Diamonds, it doesn’t feel anti-climactic. It’s all paced really well, so that even a well-placed Hearts action is terrifying.

A frequent thing I run into with a lot of deck-based games is that the cards feel like they’re abruptly being interjected into the fiction, instead of flowing naturally from it. I think Jay has solved that problem by having the Player act for the Lindworm choose from one of three. It circumvents it by letting them select the one that seems most fitting, and ignoring the ones that clearly wouldn’t be so sensible in a given moment.

RITUALS

The final thoughts I have regarding this game are about the Rituals.

A Ritual is like a brief mini-game that you play when you see fit.

As Jay writes:

“Rituals pause the normal structure of the conversation and briefly replace it with a new structure. The Ritual may represent a game of Truth or Dare, a romp through a meadow, a quiet moment among friends, sneaking down a path, or crafting a powerful spell. When a Ritual is happening, only communicate using the Moves printed on the Ritual itself.”

The Rituals are varied and differ in both their tone, actions, and prerequisites. Some require that other elements of the game be in play before they can be done, while others are free to use as players see fit.

I really like these. From a design perspective, a lot of them work as ways to connect some of the more abstract or loose ideas presented here without having to make them tie into the typical structure of the Lindworm’s cards or a Character’s Moves. They feel very similar to one of Jay’s other games, Esoteric. (I haven’t gotten a chance to play it yet, but even if I had, I couldn’t tell you about it.)

This idea of Rituals is really interesting, and I think is a wonderful way to connect longer, more narrative-driven games like Sleepaway with Jay’s other style of writing for games, which are primarily Lyric games.

(Lyric games, for those unaware, is an interesting genre of tabletop gaming that has been thriving on itch.io for the last few years, pioneered by creators like Jay Dragon, Riverhouse Games, and Maria Mison. The games vary wildly in terms of approach, design, and rules. It seems that they are largely abstract games of play, much more akin to games that children play than even a more out-there indie game.)

Here’s a link for those looking to explore the genre a little bit and see what Rituals are all about!
https://itch.io/physical-games/tag-lyric-game

Tone: 5
Writing: 5
Art: 5
Cost: $30 Print, $20 PDF
Created by: Jay Dragon, Ruby Lavin
Buy Here: https://www.possumcreekgames.com/shop/p/sleepaway

Tag: review

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