Save Vs Rant

Today’s episode is about Kingdom Death: Monster, a cooperative  boutique nightmare horror miniatures game. This is our mostly spoiler free episode. describing the game play, theme, and controversies surrounding this game. Hello everybody, Jeremy here! I figured that John has earned a much needed break and so for the month of April I’ll be taking … Continue reading "Episode 23 – Kingdom Death: Monster Part 1"

Today on Save Vs. Rant, we’re discussing RPG rules we really like – rules that can make good games great as well as rules that make unique game systems unforgettable. Part of what we discussed today was rules that can be ported to nearly any game. This is a very small category of rules, given … Continue reading "Episode 22 – Favorite RPG Rules"

Today’s episode of Save Vs. Rant is about bad house rules – non-canonical rules introduced to a game by a well-meaning group that end up making the game worse. What makes a rule bad? What causes part of a game to fail despite the best laid plans of designers? While the idea of “bad” is … Continue reading "Episode 21 – Bad House Rules"

The focus of today’s episode is how to ease newcomers to the tabletop board gaming hobby. When the average person thinks of “board games” and “card games,” they tend to think of the family game night games that everyone remembers with varying degrees of fondness (often completely unrelated to how enjoyable the games themselves were). … Continue reading "Episode 20 – Touchstones of Board Gaming"

Today’s episode is about complexity creep, of which the making of this episode was an example. When we set out to do this episode, we planned to go over only a few specific examples, but the subject proved much richer than initially expected. Even beyond what we covered in the episode, there remains a lot … Continue reading "Episode 19 – Complexity Creep"

Today, we talk about Sentinels of the Multiverse by Greater Than Games, one of our favorite co-op card game experiences! Sentinels of the Multiverse is an homage to comic books, which I only discussed very briefly in this episode. The comic books of the 1930’s and 1940’s were very different from those of the 1950’s and … Continue reading "Episode 18 – Sentinels of the Multiverse"

Design philosophy changes with time. You can see this in advertising, in clothing style, in food (consider the truly incredible inedible Jell-O nightmares of the 1950’s) and, most pertinent to this podcast and its blog, in gaming. In today’s Save Vs. Rant, we’re going to break down the differences between the Old School and New … Continue reading "Episode 17 – Old Vs. New RPGs"

Today on Save Vs. Rant, we want to discuss something that will hopefully be valuable information with all the upcoming (and ongoing) gift-giving holidays: casual games. Casual games are not only a huge part of the story of tabletop gaming, but an awesome way to introduce people to the hobby! Games and companies mentioned in … Continue reading "Episode 16 – Getting Serious About Casual Games"

On today’s episode of Save Vs. Rant, we delve into the theory of fun itself. What makes things fun? How can we understand fun on a deeper level? Why are two completely different things both enjoyable even though they may share virtually nothing in common? Find out, when we discuss Eight Flavors of Fun! Game … Continue reading "Episode 15 – Eight Flavors of Fun"

Today’s episode is about two examples of poor characterization: the Mary Sue and Pants. Mary Sue being a reference to a very old Star Trek parody fanfiction, and Pants being a reference to the Oatmeal’s less than flattering review of the Twilight series. Spoilers start at 09:05 and continue to 10:59 for Curse of Strahd, and 10:59 … Continue reading "Episode 14 – Mary Sue and Pants"

Today’s episode is all about the game SeaFall, a 4x inspired Legacy game by the ingenious designer Rob Daviua. Despite the fact that Daviua is a living legend, we at SVR do not recommend SeaFall. It is our opinion that the game has too many flaws to provide a game experience we feel is up to … Continue reading "Episode 13 – Seafall"

Today at Save Vs. Rant, the story’s the thing as we discuss lore, and why it’s important even in everyday board games. Every game can have a story, whether that story is just an excuse for a game, or the game is just an excuse for a story. “Ok, each turn you choose a player … Continue reading "Episode 12 – Lore"

Today at Save Vs. Rant, we’re going to be discussing math and logic, the building blocks of games! Remember: if you think you hate math but you like games, what you really don’t like is the presentation of the math, because all games are, at their core, math. Monty Hall, the famous host of Let’s Make a Deal, … Continue reading "Episode 11 – Beautiful Math"

Today here at Save Vs. Rant, we hope to give you an introduction to DMing with 10 pieces of advice applicable to virtually any game. We call it – DMing 101! 10 points, a quick review: 1. Remember: You’re Here to Have Fun Having fun and running a game are not mutually exclusive.  Some gamers perfer … Continue reading "Episode 10 – DMing 101"

Today’s topic is Games That Missed the Mark, wherein we discuss some games that we feel failed to live up to expectations. When we talk about games that missed the mark, we aren’t talking about bad games necessarily. Nearly every game on our list is a decent game, but it fails to live up to our … Continue reading "Episode 9 – Missed the Mark"

Our topic today is Arkham Horror by Fantasy Flight Games, one of our favorite games of all time. The original Call of Cthulhu and other mythos stories were about how insignificant and inconsequential humanity is on a cosmic scale. The notion that we aren’t the top of the food chain – that we are beneath … Continue reading "Episode 8 – Arkham Horror"

GenCon’s tagline is “The Best Four Days in Gaming,” and we here at Save Vs. Rant agree enthusiastically. As veterans of the convention, we were overjoyed to have the opportunity to attend the 50th anniversary of the iconic celebration of gaming culture! Today’s special podcast details our experience at the convention and some of the … Continue reading "GenCon Special"

Today’s topic is initiative, the determiner of turn order. For most games, initiative and turn taking is essential to ensuring that the game run smoothly, and in role playing games, it is very seldom as simple as going around the table in clockwise order. In nearly every game, there are actions that can be taken … Continue reading "Episode 7 – Initiative"

The struggle between good and evil remains one of the most common themes in fantasy literature. Since fantasy is the genre that defined the most popular roleplaying games, it should not be surprising that this conflict is frequently reflected in both the setting fluff and rules crunch of the games. Today, we tackle the topic … Continue reading "Episode 6 – I’m Chaotic Evil"

Sometimes called “social deduction games,” hidden role games are games where you are assigned a secret identity that determines your victory conditions. The classic example is Werewolf (sometimes called “Mafia” or any number of other variants), but the genre has expanded to include a diverse set of games. The classic Werewolf / Mafia game, without … Continue reading "Episode 5 – Hidden Role Games"