Naughty Novices

This week’s board game is one of my favourites, and it's called Nuns on the Run. Nuns is a competitive game for 2 to 8 players but I find it's more fun if you play with at least 5 players; the game feels better and it’s more fun for the abbess and prioress player(s). The game takes place in a convent and the players are either novices or the head nuns and each has their own objectives and goals. The game setup is pretty simple: lay out the board, deal a secret wish card to each novice and a blessing card to each player.

The goal of a novice is to sneak around the convent and try to collect their secret wish. First they must find the necessary key, which is somewhere in the convent. Its location, along with your secret wish, is marked on the secret wish card. The first novice to collect both and return to her room wins. The abbess and prioress are patrolling the halls looking for any novices out after dark—if they catch enough novices equal to the number of players in the games, it's all over and the nuns win.

One of the interesting and fun aspects of the game is that it’s primarily stealth based and uses a pen and paper log system to keep track of the players' movements. The game works like this, the novices have 4 options of movement: running, walking, sneaking and standing still, each having a pro and con which is illustrated on the cards. Each turn you choose which card you want to use and play it face down, then you mark on your log what card you used and what coordinates you ended your turn on and then when everyone is ready you all flip the cards and roll a die. The die roll is to figure out how much noise your shuffling around in the dark has made; more noise means your easier to find but being sneaky and quiet means you’ve made less headway towards your goal. If you make too much noise the nuns might hear you, allowing them to veer of their path and find you.

The prioress and abbess each move along predetermined paths chosen by the player(s) from the guard path deck. The nuns see everything in front of them in a 180 degree arc, so when they patrol their predetermined paths, they can only deviate if they hear or see a novice. Any novices in their line of sight get revealed and are forced to place their player token on the board allowing the nuns to see their movements, making them easier to catch.

Once a nun catches a novice, the novice must return to her room. If she was holding her secret item, it’s confiscated and she has to run to the room and collect another one before she can win the game. She also has to keep her player token on the board until the nuns lose sight of her, at that time she can choose to remove her piece from the board or leave it and continue on her way but as soon as she does, she’s vulnerable to being caught again. It’s not always a good idea to pop out of sight and run as soon as you can.

The last mechanic are the blessing cards, these are one-time use only and give each player a slight edge—they can be used to trick a guard or to escape from one—but the guards can also use them to their advantage.

The game’s stealth mechanics are really what makes the game as fun and challenging as it is; using line of sight and the different hiding places across the map keep the game interesting and it's fast, so you’ll usually be able to knock a few rounds out in an evening pretty quickly.

I recently thought up some drinking game rules for Nuns which can also incorporate any designated drivers you may have. The rules are simply: if one of the guards sees you, take a drink; if you have to place a scritch or a vanish token, take a drink; and if a guard catches you, take a shot, but if you place any of these tokens and a guard can't see and/or catch you, they have to drink as well. If you win the game, all other players have to finish their beverage of choice. As for the driver variant, have your drivers or all around sober living friends play the role of the nuns and remove their drinking rules.

I don’t think I can recommend this game more highly. Most of the games I play are difficult for most people to pick up initially and daunting but this game is really the opposite, it's quick/easy to learn and it's tons of fun overall. It’s definitely worth picking up even if you’re not a big fan of board games.

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No Tough Love

I've never been a huge fan of sports games but there is one that I can always play and that game is Mario Tennis. If you haven't gone back and played a N64 game since its heyday, then you probably don't know that the controls from that generation are pretty balls and most games haven't aged that well, or at all.

Unlike its fallen brethren, Mario Tennis doesn't suffer from the same issues as Goldeneye and Ocarina of Time—which make you question how you had so much fun playing these games while wrestling with the three pronged monster that was the "controller"—but it rises above all that and sits atop the pedestal alongside Super Smash Bros. and Diddy Kong Racing, with the other still playable games from that era in gaming not too far away.

I've owned this game since I was a kid but to be honest, I hadn't given it much thought until I played it recently with some buddies at a friend's apartment and it all came back to me. I realized that this game was a lot better than I ever thought it was; the controls were simple and you could pick up the basics within a round or two and after a few sets you've learned all the in's and out's. In the same vein as most Mario games, all the characters fall into different classifications—whether it be all-around, power, technique, or tricky—each brings a different strength to the table and are pretty self explanatory. The different stages also change the games ball speed, bounce and overall feel of the game.

I've spent many a night playing doubles with a bunch of friends till the wee hours of the morning, hurling insults and trash talk at one another during nail biting, tie breaker rounds. If you can round up four working N64 controllers I recommend getting this game, it is too much fun for its own good and I honestly couldn't recommend it more highly. The game is super solid and hours of fun. Also if you like drinking game the rules are simple: Miss a shot? Take a drink; Get a fault? Take a drink; Double fault? Do a shot cause you suck; Losing team finishes there drink, rinse and repeat.

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My Drinking Buddies

Given that this blog’s logo consists of both a controller and a beer, I realized that I haven’t written a true “Basement” post yet.

I always light up at the sight of a bar - both in real life and in video games. More importantly, I love stopping at bars in video games. While drinking in some video games can just be a waste of time, I still love the fact that the developers took the time to include it. In some cases, alcohol can affect your character and the gameplay. Long story short, if I find an in-game bar and I can’t actually grab a drink, I’m disappointed.

I don’t remember too many games from the past that included drinking, but I do recall a ton of recent ones. Games like Red Dead Redemption had saloons in which the main protagonist John Marston could frequent. I’m pretty sure all he drank were shots of whiskey and maybe some moonshine. Point being, he got smashed beyond belief, falling over at almost every step, groaning/yelling half of the time; certainly one of the funniest uses of alcohol in a game.

He gets knocked down, but he gets up again, ‘cause they’re never gonna keep him down.

Which segues nicely into that other Rockstar game no one ended up playing: Grand Theft Auto V. Here, alcohol doesn’t play an instantly funny role, and as such, Michael, Franklin and Trevor aren’t funny drunks. John Marston would be ashamed.



I mean, I guess Michael is an exception; at least he’ll drink whiskey. Franklin holds up fine, and well Trevor…

Well, that's Trevor for you 

You can drink in GTA V at a few places if you bring a buddy, but you never get to see the inside of the bars. From what I remember, the only exception is at the stripclub (Vanilla Unicorn). In comparison to Red Dead Redemption, the effects of alcohol wear off too fast, which is my main gripe.

BioShock takes drinking much more seriously - I can relate to this on a personal level. In the first BioShock, it actually allows you to gain health! In real life, this would have been awesome.

No time for sitting anyway

While there’s no one there to serve you alcohol, there are various types to choose from - gin, vodka, beer, whiskey, even merlot for the winos!

In contrast, the Stray Sheep bar in Catherineis very busy. The main character, Vincent Brooks, always ends up there in-between gameplay segments. It’s a bar’s bar - you’re there to relax, converse, and drink.

Vincent's probably gonna go break the seal

This is probably a bar I’d go to if it existed in real life: a nice decor and a relaxed vibe - but it’s no dive. It’s got some good pizza too.

Unfortunately, I haven’t played Mass Effect 3 - I heard they’ve got a good bar. However, I have played Mass Effect 2and remember the Afterlife Club. I didn’t do too much drinking there, as I was too caught up with missions. However, there was a night when I stopped by Afterlife and had a few. The dialogue with the bartender was hilarious.

Now I don’t know what’s in those drinks, but they’re all green. And when I think green, I automatically think of absinthe and how strong it can be. Shepard’s the real deal, a true tank amongst tanks.

I’m probably missing a ton of other bars, mainly because I haven’t seen them. What are some of your favourite in-game bars? 

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That's How I Role

So I recently started playing Fallout : New Vegas again, after talking about it on the podcast I started jonesing for another play through, and I figured I would talk about it in my blog this week.

Now to preface this I should explain to you the way I play most Bethesda games: I give my character a compulsion. Now this ranges from ADD, OCD, alcoholism, addiction, compulsive lying, inferiority complexes and kleptomania. Now I know what you're thinking "Why the hell would you do that?" and the short answer is "its fun".

No matter which compulsion you pick, it adds a new dynamic to the game forcing you to look at rooms, areas and interactions differently. During my last play through, my character was an alcoholic who loved whiskey. I ended up collecting all the whiskey I could find and maintained a constant buzz throughout the game. Fallout even acknowledges addictions to the point where you have to drink or you suffer the negative effects of your previous binges. By the end of the game I was running low on whiskey and had to scavenge the wastelands for every bottle. It adds a surprising new element to the game: something as trivial as an optional consumable becomes a major item you need at all times.

So now that you know about how I role-play in Bethesda games, I can tell you about my new campaign. I decided to make Campaloupe a compulsive liar who is obsessed with ashtrays and after playing for about three hours, I've learned something I hadn't thought about...there are shit ton of ashtrays in a game about Las Vegas. I mean seriously the people who preceded the nuclear holocaust had a seriously unhealthy smoking problem. Bundle in the fact that I have to lie whenever I'm prompted too, the game has actually been pretty crazy so far. I've gotten into about four or five fights with people in-game due to it and I've all ready collected about 90 ashtrays, which are scattered across my floor in Novac.

To be honest though it's something I think everyone should try in any game you can. Like I said before, it really adds new layer to the game and I consider it a game long mission or objective.

Well that's how I've been playing lately and as I progress, I may throw in a few updates now and again on Campaloupe's exploits.

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