The Giant Brain

Hello everyone,

Hope you are all well and enjoying the wealth of new games coming out from Essen and Gencon. Some very tasty looking things on the horizon and I’ll post about them should I pick any up. The last couple of months have seen me journey to Norway, Ireland then back to Scotland and play a bunch of games that I can recommend to readers of this site.

7 wonders

One of the hits of last year, I finally picked up a copy in Norway. Really good fun, beautifully presented game with enough to think about during play to keep you constantly on your toes. Not the deepest game in the world, but a good family game which I am looking forward to playing more over Christmas.

Mansions of Madness

Probably the best game that FFG has produced in sometime. You all play investigators arriving at a spooky mansion, but the reason you are there can change with each scenario. There are 5 scenarios, each with 3 possible outcomes so every time you play the game, even if you have played that scenario before, you can never be entirely sure how things will play out.

The game seems well balanced allowing the Keeper, the person running the scenario, to really lay into the investigators without fear of it being imbalanced. If you are a fan of the horror genre and fancy a quick playing boardgame that justifies the large number of components it comes with, I suggest checking it out.

Dreadfleet

I picked myself up a copy of the latest boxed game from GW and I am really happy with my purchase. The system relies heavily on the random but is a lot of fun and comes with some beautiful miniatures and a really lovely sea mat. I may look into picking up some other naval games just to use it.

Other Games..

I am still running old school Dungeons & Dragons and really enjoying it. I am going to work on some articles about what my group have gotten from the experience, it has been an interesting game to run.

In development news at the moment, I am planning to release a PDF version of Revenge of the B-Movie and am looking forward to getting some more playtests of Nobel Intentions in, though that might not be for another month or so as my work takes up a lot of my time in November/ December.

I hope you are all well, and wish you happy gaming.

Iain

Still no new test of Nobel Intentions I’m afraid, but I have been fiddling around with some other ideas and playing some interesting games.

Old School D&D

I picked up a copy of ‘Swords & Wizardry’ complete at Games Expo and my weekly gaming group have been enjoying delving into some old school dungeons. We have been running in a way that allows for quite a lot of player input. For instance the first time the players came across elves I asked ‘What are elves like?” and their responses are fed back in to the gameworld.

The dungeons I am running are also totally randomly generated, using the AD&D GMs guide no less, which means there is a level of discovery in play for me as well as the players. I am finding this hugely enjoyable the characters are now setting out into the wilderness bound for some city adventures!

Survive

A fantastic reprint of an older game, survive is great fun forcing your hand to screw over other players as you try and race your own meeples away from an ever shrinking Atlantis. It hasn’t gone over with my entire group, but I think enough of them like it that it will be seeing its way to the table.

Death Angel

The recent expansions to this fantastic cooperative game, have seen it hit the table a couple of times over the last month. FFG are doing POD expansions for some of their range, allowing them to do smaller expansions, that are pretty reasonably priced.

The expansions in this case give you 2 new teams and a bunch of new mission possibilities. We made it through the first time, but got eaten to bits the second time through. I don’t think I have written a review of this yet, too lazy to check at the moment. I’ll try and chuck one up soon as I personally think it is the best coop game out there at the moment and that it should be in every gamers collection.

Smallworld

My wife and I sat down to a two player game of Smallworld when the flat was being torn apart by electricians. We have a nice new kitchen! Anyway, where was I. Ah yes, Smallworld. Excellent game for which I have every expansion, and one my wife doesn’t mind playing with me. We had good fun trying out some of the new combinations the expanded game provides, and am hoping to get a larger game in sometime soon. If anyone has played the Underground version of the game let me know if it is worth picking up.

and the other projects

Whilst I await a chance to get Nobel Intentions another shot I am working on a card game called ‘Eyes in the Dark’ about being chased by large monsters, toying with Police Procedural games and trying to find the time to lay out Reel Adventures. Hoping to get it all laid out for the end of October.

Happy gaming

Iain

One of the problems I have had in the previous versions of Nobel Intentions stems from the grid that is made during the game. The table starts blank, or with one card in play, and the inventions are then built up from that position. As the inventions are completed they are removed from the table and the grid collpases. Bad if I want positional play to have a meaning.

So, back to the drawing board, sort of. I am keeping the idea of the grid but now it is built at the start. Each player will be dealt cards to form the grid and then play those cards out face down. The play of the game will come from turning those cards over, thus activating their in grid abilites that will help the player move their research tokens about. The cards will also have an ‘invented’ ability that will activate when players complete an invention with some of the cards face down, thus giving a risk/reward mechanic to making inventions quickly.

The main play will come from moving ‘research tokens’ around with some Othello-esque mechanics for stealing each others inventions. I should get to playtest this version this week and I am hoping it will solve the issues I have been having with this particular games development.

Happy Gaming

Iain

Well Games Expo was as good fun as ever and it was great to meet some B-Movie fans and general indie games enthusiasts over the course of the con.

For the majority of the con I was on the Indie games booth but I also managed to get in a game of Reel Adventures.  It was called ‘On her Majesty’s shrunken service’ and was a James Bond style story where one of the protagonists was only a few inches tall. It was a really fun game and I’ll try to write it up soon.

Of course no con is complete without a few purchases and I picked up Survive: Escape from Atlantis, Ascending Empires and some old school gaming in the form of Swords and Wizadry and Vornheim. Vornheim especially is worth a look, a beautifully produced handbook for running city adventures. The one other product I saw that I really want is Operation:Fallen Reich. An exquisite production with a crazy board game attached to it that is used for character creation. May see about picking this up later in the year.

It was really nice to be back at Games Expo this year and to meet Eero and Mark from Arkenstone. Also good to catch up with Andrew and Matt, whose imprints you can find links to under our Spotlight tab.

The expo reignited my enthusiasm for roleplaying which had been waning a bit recently, and I am hoping to back next year with a few new products including Action Movie, Reel Adventures and Nobel Intentions, which I think I fixed on the way back up from Birmingham.

All the best

Iain

Hello everyone,

If you are heading down to the wonderful UK Games Expo this coming weekend then be sure to drop by and say hi at Booth 17, the Indie Games booth. I’ll be there alongside Andrew Kenrick, Matt Machell and Eero Tuovinen, selling games, talking about games design and generally having a good time.

I will also be on a panel of other RPG designers, at 12am on the Saturday. Come along and ask any questions you like of myself and my fellow panellists and hopefully will be able to answer in a vaguely coherent fashion!

I’m running a game of Reel Adventures over the weekend, honestly I am going to release that this year, and I am hoping to get a playtest or two in as well. I’ll have the finished version of Action Movie with me and hopefully Nobel Intentions and Minions.

Hope to see some of you there.

All the best

Iain

Welcome one and all to the new website for ‘The Giant Brain’ games company. Things have been a little quiet round here of late, but I have finally found some time to get things back in gear.

For starters I have redone the website and I hope you like the changes. The changes are mostly cosmetic and organisational, the only major alteration being the removal of the forums. As it stands the games we produce are not large enough to need forums to chat about them, and as such they were just standing empty. If you do want to contact the company you can do so from the appropriate Tab above or head over to the forums at The Collective Endeavour and I’ll catch you there.

I’ll be using the site to write a bit more than I used to covering my thoughts on games design as I work on new projects under the Development tab, talking about what I have been playing and enjoying under Recently Played and shining a light on games I think are worth paying attention to, but not necessarily get the time to review under Spotlight.

Revenge of the B-Movie 1 & 2 are both back in stock and we will be doing our best to make sure it remains so from now on. You can buy both of these products from our new store. Our next game in that line ‘Action Movie’ will be out later this year.

Reel Adventures is finished and ready for layout and I will be working on that in the next few months. A release date will be announced as soon as I am confident I can hit it. I have delayed that game again and again for which I apologise, but it will be out as soon as I can get the time to lay it out and get it printed.

Our next release will be a PDF version of B-Movie followed closely by its sequel in PDF form and a bundle. This is a new avenue for the company and I will let you all know how it is going in an effort to help out others who want to do small press card game printing.

Anyway, keep your eyes on the site as I will be posting regular articles on games development, printing schedules and events I’ll be attending.

Wishing you good gaming.

Iain McAllister