Hey guys, and welcome to episode 160 of Maple to Maple.
Today I brought back Adam from Tabletop Vibes and we're going
to talk about cooperative board games.
So I want to ask you a question, Adam, hit me.
Have you ever survived a group meeting, whether it's virtually
on Zoom or something, or you were in a on a board meeting or
something in a conference room? Yes, I have most definitely.
Well, then you already understand cooperative.
Board games, that is a good. That is a very good parallel for
sure. It's it's so true.
Everyone has an opinion. The agenda is usually ambitious.
The clock is unforgiving. Oh.
My gosh. And somehow a decision has to be
made today, right? Yeah.
But we need, but we need, we need to have a meeting about
that decision before. We, and that agenda that we
started with, isn't what we end up with at all.
Exactly. So in this episode, we are going
to talk about cooperation. We're going to talk about
forming coalitions, negotiating priorities, delegating
responsibility, and quietly hoping someone else takes the
blame if it all goes sideways. Cooperative board games turn the
table into a friendly committee. Or at least they should.
But can we all work together well enough to actually win?
So it's it's US against the board.
How cool is that, Adam? Adam, thanks for joining me on
this one. I'm really excited to talk with
you about cooperation and cooperative.
Board games, yeah, thanks for having me.
I'm super stoked. And then I guess it's fun for me
because I have, I feel like I've just recently became more of a
cooperative player, right in real life and in board game.
It's it's so true because you were just last year, you were
like cooperative board games today.
Yeah, I don't do that. I don't play cooperatively.
My slogan for this was used to be I'd rather lose than share
victory. I feel like I've done a lot of
inside work and I'm doing way better at this now.
I think about, I think I, it's, it's hard not to think about the
world around us, right, right. And and everything that's going
on and it's so divisive so. Constantly so divisive.
Yeah, rather than focusing on the negative and focusing on the
hate, there's enough hate out there and I don't need to throw
more out there. I think cooperative board games,
which by the way, has a rich history.
I was stunned. I mean I was stunned to find out
some of the 1st and oldest cooperative board games.
Yeah, hit me with some history. Let's hear it.
No, I've got it for you. So here, here's a cool thing.
And guys, I got, I got my notes in front of me, so I was
prepared sorta. OK, so I want to tell you about
OK, now I, I for, for those of you listening, we will do a top
five. We have chosen our top five
cooperative board games. And the other reason, let me
tell you the other reason why we're doing this.
I've got some colleagues at work who are not modern gamers like
you and I and the community, but they've, you know, they've got
their family and I introduced them to this very concept.
And they were like, wait, so no one, no one wins.
Like we go to. I'm like, yeah, it's US against
the board, Right, Right. You know this, You have kids.
You want your children to learn how to work together, right?
As a team with their siblings, right?
Yep. So these are great failure.
Yes, Oh my God, that's. A good winning, yeah, that you
can't just get everything and it doesn't always work out the way
we want it to. Yep, Yep, these are all skills
that you need to achieve victory in a cooperative board game.
Right and real life. And and real life.
So Speaking of real life, the very first cooperative board
game. Now, I think part of the reason
why I had to dig through this one.
This is really obscure. It was invented in 19 O3.
Wow, right. Yeah, it was.
It was designed by Elizabeth Maggie.
And the name of the game was called The Landlord's Game.
Yeah. Now it's really cool.
It is clearly. I mean, I mean, I, I could
probably do an entire episode just talk about the history of
this game. It's so cool.
That is cool. It's just.
Yeah. It's.
It's all about what is it not Georgian George's.
It's this whole capitalism and everything.
It is clearly a precursor to Monopoly.
It is totally a precursor to Monopoly.
I feel like I'm rather. Still landlords than a monopoly.
Well, OK, so here's the thing. The other reason why no one
knows this is it's not a truly cooperative game, but it had a
cooperative variant. So it's kind of the first to
introduce this concept. The whole point, it's 19 O3.
She's on the East Coast of the United States.
I want to say Delaware. I thought I had that written
down and now I can't find it. But anyway, so she wanted to
prove that the rise in land ownership, right, would
impoverish the tenants who were renting the spaces in the city,
in the cities of the Northeast and up and down the East Coast,
right? Because this is 19 O 3.
So you're seeing a huge urban boom in the US And she's like,
this is a bad thing. She made a board game and there
what? But there was this cooperative
variant that would allow you to have what they were called
prosperity rules, where it was US against the board and the
board played the role of the landlord.
And so you had to try to work together and share the wealth.
Right. Takedown capitalism.
Yeah, right. Whereas Monopoly is all about
we're capitalists, it's the reversal, right?
We're trying to grab all the property.
Yeah. But I just thought this was
really interesting. But not a lot happens, right?
From from 19 O3, you see very, very little, right.
Like this. This concept of designing board
games, specifically fostering cooperation amongst players, it
really doesn't become, I don't even know if it becomes
prominent, but in the 60s and 70s you start to see this rise
in a couple of games. So there are claims,
unfortunately, Gary Gygax is no longer with us to say
definitively one way or the other.
But Dungeons and Dragons, there's, there's so many sources
that claim that Dungeons and Dragons was designed to foster
cooperation. I.
Mean, for the most part, you do. I think that Dungeons and
Dragons does foster cooperation. I don't know that the designer
was specifically thinking that I'm, you know, maybe he was, Who
knows? But but D&D is often cited by
multiple sources. Yeah.
Right. And this is kind of a one person
playing party. You know.
You are in a party there. Exactly.
You've got you've got to work together to achieve an ambitious
goal. Slay the monster, right?
Right. Day alive, right 100%.
Although nowadays when we get into these meetings, our
ambitious, our ambitious goals are, you know, make this much
money or build the skyscraper or acquire this hospital or yeah,
boy, well, we've come along, haven't we?
Yeah, for. Sure.
But yeah, so it's really interesting.
And so you see a few things. And then the 80's, the 80s is
when you start to get a couple of other games, just a few.
So Arkham Horror, right? Yeah.
I think a lot of the reason why I think the the you see a lot of
Lovecraft because like the 80s is when the literature, the
literature of HP Lovecraft fell into public domain.
Now this falls into kind of kind of my job outside of the
podcast, right, As an Arkhamist copyright law.
We talked about that with Ty last week a little bit.
Public domain's a really big one, being able to use sources
that have reached a certain that they're old enough now that
they're free so you don't have to pay for the IP.
And Arkham Horror is US against the board.
And it worked really well. Sherlock Holmes consulting
Detective. Yeah, in fact, I think.
Nope. I have Sherlock Holmes Murder on
the Oran Express. For those of you who are
watching it, this is this was given to me by a friend whose
mother or grandmother had passed away, and she found that copy.
We've not played it because it's so old.
I don't want it to fall apart. But it's another another
cooperative game. And then Reiner Kinetia in 2000
came out with the cooperative board game Lord of the Rings.
So there's not a lot of titles to rely upon in this.
So this genre is really young, right?
In 2000, it really starts by the 2000s.
It really just kind of explodes, right?
So that's kind of right. Like, how many do I have on my
shelf? I mean, we're going to do our
top five, but right, I think you, you and I, I think we must
have covered at least 30 topics, 30 different titles.
Yeah, you were. PJ is like give me 5.
And I just like pinging him like text message twice.
What about this one, This one, this one, He's like 5.
I'm like, I'm so sorry. Yes, yes, my brain.
Just like. Going crazy.
No, it's totally true. I, I also, let's get back to DED
for a moment because it's not a single game, right?
Right. It's it, it gave rise to
campaign games because you and I talked about this as well.
I think one of our top five is a campaign game.
Yeah. Because I kind of think of while
campaign games are cooperative, I don't I don't think of them as
when I think of cooperative board games, I think of a game
where we're all working together, but we're going to hit
the table, we're going to play and we're done, right?
Right. It's a win or lose.
Yeah, Together. We're not together.
Campaign games are, you know, they're going to be long.
We're going to, we're going to play and then we're going to
play next week and the week after or the next day or
whatever. And I wanted to kind of restrict
that because I feel like that's a separate genre.
Yeah, it's a whole nother episode you can do exactly.
So stay tuned next week now. Yeah, campaign games.
Yeah, well, you know Adam, Adam, you and I learned from last
year. We, you and I don't do
back-to-back episodes. No.
No one wants to see our faces that many times.
Or mine it maybe. Maybe it's me.
I'm going to put it on me. All I know is for those of you
listening, last year Adam and I did a look back at 24, then we
did a look ahead to 25 and y'all were not able to look ahead.
Yeah, nobody watched. We got more hits on our looking
back than looking forward. And no one wanted to look
forward with me in their in their.
So, so you only get at him for one week and we'll, we'll move
on. Right.
Yes, so, so thank you for letting me take you on that
journey. A brief history of cooperative
board games. There's a little bit more to say
about the modern, the modern era and you know, we'll talk about
them like we, because we have to talk about Matt Leacock.
He is. He's like the guy.
Right. Yep.
And I guess we should probably just talk about him now, right?
Go for it, yeah. Yeah, so in the early thousands
is really when you start seeing game designers tackling
cooperative board games with the intention of nurturing
cooperation, that the board or the table is your enemy.
And Matt Leacock was one of The Pioneers.
I mean, yes, Reiner Kanitia came out with the Lord of the Rings
cooperative game, but I think it's safe to say most people
look to Matt Leacock, and he's got a lot of titles.
Right, Right. Man, I'm not even going to try
to list them. Well, I probably should.
Try. I mean, there's tons of them.
He does, but his biggest, probably his most defining game,
Adam, you know what it is. Tell the people.
He's doing the drum roll. This is all you.
It's pandemic. Yep, it's pandemic.
See. That's the people.
Either you love it or you don't. But.
He. Did.
Clearly the most definitive cooperative board game out
there, right? Whenever you say you want to
play a cooperative game, you usually go are we playing
Pandemic or are we playing Betrayal?
Yeah, Or any of other Matt Leacock's games, because he's
got the Forbidden series. Yes, right.
Forbid Forbidden Island, Desert, Forbidden.
That was one of my first games
like I was given in like the tin was Forbidden Island.
Yep. Yes, yeah.
Yep. And I think we played the living
daylights out of it until I was like, I don't need anybody's
help anymore. I can get us there.
Which is why, OK, so it's funny that you bring that up.
I love that you bring that up because I even did a little bit
of research on this too. One of the things that Matt
Leacock was trying to overcome, and not just him but designers,
is one of the design flaws in cooperative games is table
captaining. Yeah, or.
Quarterbacking. Yeah, Yep.
Or quarterbacking. What did it?
So for those of you who don't know, table captaining or
quarterbacking is when you go to play a cooperative game at a
table and Adam tells you what to do for your entire turn.
DJ goes because DJ has to take a turn, and I'm like, here's what
you're going to want to do on your turn because we're going to
win. You're going to do this, and
then you're going to do this, this, this and this.
And then you're like, why am I here, right?
Yeah, it's it's unfortunate because either you have new
players who aren't certain or you have experienced players who
are. I don't know if it's
self-confidence or if it's an introvertedness right, but have
trouble asserting themselves in a group.
Yeah, right. I mean, it's intimidating,
right? Yeah, it can be.
I mean, like, right. Because you're in a cooperative
game trying to want to win. No one wants to be the guy that
get making us all lose, right? I mean, I'm exactly at this
point, usually I champion it. I'm like, let's go.
We're running into that building.
Yeah, like don't do it. We're going to lose.
I'm like, here we go. But I like to what I like to do,
and I've been guilty of table captaining as well as well, OK.
It's, it's very easy to do though.
It is. There's a fine line between help
and quarterbacking, and it's. Yeah, Oh, man.
Yeah. So what I do is I just say,
Adam, it's your turn. And I wait for you to ask
questions and then I try to read your neuro linguistical cues.
Right, nice. Just get up all in there.
Are you? For those of you who don't know,
that's body language, right? I like, do you see?
Patterns. I can't figure it out.
Do I look like I got this? Yeah, 'cause scared.
What I used to, what I used to do, and this is kind of a form
of table captaining as well as Adam.
You could take this action and then this.
It would result in this or you could take this action in a
result. The options guy.
Yeah, but what's really But the the reality is, is that there
are more options. I've just cut out all the
unnecessary ones. So now I will let you open the
door to the Dragon's lair or walk, walk into the city 'cause
we're talking about pandemic. Walk into the city with disease
cubes and. Everywhere.
Whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So. Yeah, take your disease ridden
self and fly to the next country and mess up that.
But that is contingent upon the individual player, right?
So like, I have to be self aware enough that I have this
personality flaw and then I'm going to intentionally rein
myself in and allow you to play this game right?
Right. There are recent cooperative
games that have address that. I think some of them are going
to be on our list and avoid that table captaining.
I do want to say that Chrono friends by space mold, these
guys, these guys, this game I I got to I and I talked about it
at Gen. Con.
I got to play test it and it was really cool.
I couldn't get the scheduling to get them on the show.
They've are they're Kickstarters already.
They already launched, they did fully fund.
That's. Good.
They might have a late pledge later this year and I'll get
them on the show. It's a this is a really cool
game, guys, but I was just really impressed by there was no
table captaining. Like I really couldn't table
captain because there's there's just enough things going on and
my character, my character's ability.
A lot of times we see asymmetry in in games where it's like,
well, I do this one thing or you do this one thing, but when when
this. So it's a lot of subjective or
subjunctives. If this, then I get to do this.
If that, then I get to do this. So I had to really watch what I
was doing. Right.
And I it makes you to have the greater good.
Yes. As a whole.
And I was floored. I guess This is amazing.
It was an amazing experience because I hate it when Adam
tells me. I'm excited to play about it.
You should. It's really, it's really a great
game. So if there's a late pledge
coming out, it's Chrono Friends Chrono.
Friends. Yeah, it's this whole, yeah,
you're on a, you're on, I want to say you're on a space
station. You're not on a spaceship, but
you're it's you're in a temporal causality loop and you're, so
you could, you could go backwards in time and time
itself is a resource. It's it's wildly, wildly crazy,
but we're working together to fight the chrono fiends.
But I was just, that was a really cool experience.
Right. And that's what cooperative
place should be, yes, eliciting. That's what you should be
walking away with. It was a great experience to all
of us. Come together, play this game
and leave with That was a blast, right?
That is. The goal, it is the goal, and
it's why I love cooperative games, because I love, I mean,
how many times have I said this on the podcast?
I love people and I love the relationships that I've
developed. Obviously I'm working to nurture
a community of gamers, publishers, designers, but I
don't want to play a game and then boss you around and tell
you what to do the whole time because that can't be fun for
you. Now that's fun for Adam.
Could be sometimes, depends on who it is.
I have been guilty of doing that, but nevertheless, game
sometimes. Yeah, I've been.
I think that now you do yeah. I mean, like, I think for me,
it's been working on the fact of like, right?
Like we were already talking about, I'm trying to cultivate
like people wanting to want to play board games, right?
If I love this hobby and I want people to enjoy the hobby that I
love, then I can't be the guy being like, you're going to want
to do this. I will say that people, if you
ask me questions, I will give you that's not optimal.
You don't want to do that. You probably want to play this
way, but it's your choice. Make the choice.
There's too many choices. I'm like, well, that's just pick
one. There's no real wrong answer.
We will die on this one. That's a real wrong answer.
You can still choose it. And I think it's been more of
like, instead of like making sure everyone's playing the game
correctly, It's now more of I want everybody to have a great
experience and time together with like crazy moments where
like, Oh my gosh, we're trying to, all you got to do is not
roll A9, they roll A9. The whole table erupts and we
have, that was the epic moment, right?
It's like, I think that's where my shift has been for me.
But that's a that's a good place to be.
Yeah, I think, I think so. I have moments where I'm like,
no, what you doing? You're not doing it.
Yeah. Plus, how often do we get to see
each other, right? We go to these conventions.
I mean, granted, it's not going to be many for me this year.
Yeah, that's sad. Well, that's a whole nother
thing. Yeah, that's a sad.
Thing right, we were talking about how you and I won't see
each other until origins and then that's the end of my
convention season and we. Had a whole thing planned.
We did, we did. We had a whole thing.
Yeah, and a whole cooperative gaming thing, joint trip thing.
It was so good. It was so good.
So the reality is I don't want to boss you around if this is my
only time to see you for the year.
I want to have fun with you and I want to play games with you.
So. So naturally cooperative games
are great, but you want to avoid that table captaining and games
are getting better or punch you in the arm because you because.
I instigate things. I think sometimes.
The sometimes the tabletop vibes are not always the best vibes.
No, they're not. And that's why I love this dude.
Oh. Man, so let's dive into our top
five cooperatives. So I mean, I don't know, is this
really our top five or is it just our five?
This is like these are like recommendations.
Yeah, I would feel that this is more of like games, cooperative
games that we really enjoy. Yeah.
Like that, I don't know if
they're. That if I'm going.
To go if they're my top five, yeah.
Yeah, they're not like, I wouldn't say top fives.
They're not like these are games that if I was going to pick a
cooperative game, here's what I would tell people.
Like which game of these five would you want to play?
And I would want to want to play those games.
OK, that I think that's a better, that is a better
description because we went back and forth on this.
But I will be honest, these aren't my top fives.
There are other cooperative board games out there that I
absolutely love, and then there's campaign games too, so.
Which is a whole nother episode. Which we've already said about
that. So, you know, for those of you
who are looking to play games cooperatively with your family
in the future and you're interested, stay tuned.
Who knows when, I haven't scheduled it, but there'll be an
episode on campaign games and maybe if y'all are good enough
and kind enough, we'll have Adam back.
If you want me to be, you might not, might not, That's fine.
But you know what? It's been a year.
So it's been a year since you're gone?
You were distancing yourself so you can bring me back in.
I love it. That's good, man.
So yeah, why don't you start us off with yeah, start us off with
number. 5 #5 I guess this one would be let's go with terror
escape. Let's do it, yeah.
So terror escape is a cooperative 3 verse one
survivalists and a murderer and a big mansion that sits in front
of you. The murderer sits on one side,
other people, everybody else sits on the other side.
And it's kind of like, I'm going to probably get grilled to the
cold for this, but it's it's literally battleship meets
betrayal meets a deduction game like and it kind of just smushes
it all together and makes this epic game.
But I personally like this better than betrayal.
I feel like it's the level up version of betrayal and hustle.
Yes, absolutely, totally. Agree, a ton of fun and I think
what makes it a ton of fun besides you're trying to sit
like actually there's a reel that we have about, I think it's
on PJS Instagram. It's not on my Instagram.
We played with Nashville board game guy Steven.
And the fun part is right. So all this, the survivalists on
one side and we're trying to communicate with each other what
we're all going to do and what we think we're going to do
without saying what we're going to do because the murderer is
listening. So we're literally like looking
to sing to each other and we're doing like hand motions on the
board trying not to like it's, it's hilarious.
And you would think that this doesn't work and you're laughing
because you don't know what PJ is doing with his fingers or
which version, what he's trying to convey to you.
Who's taking what weapon. Try not to make noise.
And then like it's this whole cat and mouse dance thing but
like having the other person be the murderer and like try to
like battleship. Like are you in B3?
Right. So let's talk about, let's talk
about that, that battleship comparison just for a second,
right. For, for, for those who are not
familiar with Terror Escape. Yeah.
So, you know, in battleship, you know, you've got your two boards
that are vertical and then you're horizontal.
Well, the game, the game board, there's a map of the mansion in
front of the three survivalists, and there's the exact same map
of the mansion on the other side for the 4th player who's playing
the murderer, the monster, the killer, what whatever the
opponent is. And then like you said, there's
this tall 3 dimensional vertical model of a mansion that is it's
might be, this is probably, this game is probably in my top five
in terms of most beautiful games on the table, right?
Like giving you an experience, it's up there.
It really is. And of course people have three
3D printed to make that mansion look cooler and whatnot.
There's a dice tower built into the mansion.
So you roll the dice and it just falls out into the tray there.
So the reality is, so we have the survive, we we, I'm assuming
the role of the survivalist. Yeah, you did great when we
played, by the way. To be fair, I've only played
this twice. Once was with you and Steven and
and Daniel. Right.
And then I played it in England. Nice.
Yeah. But I was, again, I was a
survivalist. So.
Hard to be the murderer. So yeah, so the idea is we're
doing all this non verbal communication.
So if you're the one, you know, all you see is like shoulder
movements and yeah. Everyone's just.
You know, so it's just obscene. And then we the survivalist
start laughing at each other because we're thinking how
absurd we look. Right, 100% And then like the
funny part too is because you're like in this mansion that's
haunted by a murder killer, we all literally start talking like
and we're like whispering like, I mean like you don't even need
to. We're sitting next to each
other. But like you all of a sudden you
start getting in this like he's going to hear us, but she will.
But then we're not actually in danger.
But we feel like we should be quite like, it's it like just
gives us a listen feeling where you're like, the tension just
mounts. So at the so I think why don't
you talk about the end of each round?
This is why we're communicating non verbally, right?
Yes. At the end of every round you
check for noise and what you're trying to you're trying to do is
escape the mansion. You have to find keys and unlock
the door or you can phone, build the radio and phone out to the
cops and they have to wait for them to get there and survive
till they get there. So then they can come in and
save your life. And so you're try at the end of
every round, you're checking for noise that you made by opening a
door, like rummaging through some storage thing to find some
item or you got a key and you tried it and now he's and you
like made noise, right? And so you tell the other
person, I made noise in B3, and in B1, sometimes you make noise
on purpose to draw that person away from where you're trying to
go. And then you pass your turn over
to the killer murderer. And then that person's trying to
figure out where they think you're at on their side of the
battleship terror board. And then they do their things
like, OK, they go. Should they go and investigate
B3 where there was noise? Or are you just lying?
I have been the worst killer person though.
I'm not good at it. Either I don't pay attention
enough or I'm just easily swayed by people making fake noise
moves. But I am awful.
Awful. I think that's the hardest role
to play. It is.
I have not seen a not seen the one the killer win win.
But again, I've only heard it twice.
I've only played it twice. Yeah.
So. So that's Terror Escape.
Right. If you can check that out.
Ice makes games. Yeah.
The, the beauty is if you're wanting to play it with your
family and of course this one's a little bit more adult.
It's a little bit there's. Yeah.
And and not just subject matter, which of course subject matter.
Right. But also, the strategy requires
a level. It's like you're not going to
play this with your 6 or 10 year olds, but you could play it with
your preteens or teenagers. Yeah, yeah, they'll, they'll
totally get it. But it also allows you like,
like, you're not always forcing them to work together like that.
That could become monotonous. So this is a game where at least
one person gets to be the bad guy.
Well, and even in the cooperative feeling, you can
still go do you, it just might, you just might die.
Like like, like like here kids, we're going to talk about
consequences, right? And so like, right, everybody's
like, we should go this way. You're like, yeah, screw you,
I'm going to go this direction. And then next turn that person
finds you, takes you down to and because like you put like health
meters on and then they're looking at you like bad choice.
So yeah, teaches a lot of things.
So that's terror escape. Tear Escape by Ice makes games.
There you go, you want to do. You want to do our next one?
Yeah, number #4 we're going to go in a completely different
direction. Yeah, 100%.
Let's see, you need time. You see how long it takes to
tell, to explain this game to you.
And it's just one. This is a fully.
Yeah, this is a fully cooperative game in which you
have. Let me see.
I think it's three to seven, so it's a minimum of three, but
seven players played it yesterday at 5.
You draw, you have a deck of, you have a deck of cards and you
draw 13 cards and then everyone has a dry erase easel in front
of them and a dry erase marker and we take turns.
One person is the guesser. Mind you, this is fully
cooperative. So I draw the card and there are
5 words numbered one through 5 and I place it so I can't see
the words on the card, but you all can.
So what do you do? You can write because remember,
the name of the game is just one.
First of all, the word you're trying to, and I'm going to say
2. So that number, that that word,
it's one word. You have to get me to guess
based on you writing with your dry erase marker.
One word on your easel. OK, so I close my eyes and I
wait. Yeah.
And you all you all right? Once all the players have locked
in their one word, they reveal them to each other.
If there are any duplicates, those get erased.
Cancelled. Yes.
And then whatever's left over, you reveal to the gasser, and
the gasser can look at those clues each and put them all
together and try to guess what's happening.
Man, so like if you guys do too much similar things, you can
leave the guesser with barely any options to figure out what
it is. That's yes.
I I am happy to state that yesterday at five players, we
won all 13. That's awesome.
And there was no duplication. Wow, that's crazy.
It's all about when you're thinking about the word you want
to write on your dry erase is do I?
Do I need to be clever or can I put the obvious right?
Is PJ going to think the same thing as me and write it because
it's basic? Or should I make it harder?
Or maybe he's thinking something harder so I should make it
basic? Right.
Exactly, exactly. Because OK, so yesterday one of
the clues was Fireman, right? And so the there are four of us
trying to write and then it'll tell you what you can and cannot
write, you know, So I think someone wrote Carrie, someone
wrote Ladder, one of the one of the clues I'm trying to
remember. But the clue that I wrote
because you could write onomatopoeias, which are words
that are sounds, I wrote we. That's awesome.
And so putting the clues together, the other player
guessed Fireman properly so. Right.
I mean, that's it. It's it's a lot of fun, but you
have to have a minimum of three players.
There's a two player variant. It's interesting.
It's not very. Good.
I would. Well, it's not really made.
I don't feel like that game is made for two.
No, no. I feel like the more people you
have, the more guessing and trying to figure stuff out
becomes more fun because there's so much.
Yep, put it accommodates a group of seven, so you can have a
larger group. It's cooperative, so we all win.
It's basically. And The thing is, is you can
keep going if you want to, just more cards than you can, but you
want to see if you can get 13 without duplicating.
I will say that when I played this game in the UKI think we
played like 12 players sitting around a table at the bar at the
hotel. Yeah.
Now, we didn't all have dry erase, so we used our cell
phones, you know, and we would draw the word and hold it up.
There was a lot of duplication. I can see that happening for
sure. So it's it's just one by repos
productions. Oh.
Repo makes it. That's.
Awesome. Yeah, repo repo productions 8
plus is the age according to the game.
Got to be able to write. To 7?
Yep. Three to three to seven.
Yeah, yeah, totally fun. It is not mature, you know what
I mean? Like it's.
Like my family would like this game so I should probably check
this out. You definitely should check this
out, I think. Totally.
It would have a lot of fun with it too.
Yeah, I mean, I have a really big family too.
So like gatherings and stuff, everybody likes cooperative
games are usually the way to go some of the time.
So that's that's great. Yeah, the other thing too.
All of our season gamers, right when we get together at gaming
conventions, because we haven't seen each other in forever, we
end up with like 6 or seven of us at a table and at least we
can. Well, OK, that's true.
That's because you're popular. You're so popular.
That's every Everybody knows Adam.
And then like all of a sudden our table of eight goes to the
table of 17. And then like, or it's just
people we've seen before and like, yes, everyone just sits
down. Next thing you know, we're like,
it's like the Last Supper. Yeah, Yep.
But anyway, this is a game that can accommodate, and it's
perfect for conventions because heck, you know, it's easy to
play. And it's not isn't the box not
that big either, right? No, it's not big at all, right?
Absolutely not. So you could easily, yeah, maybe
travel. So I mean, you could fit in your
travel bag, you could fit in a backpack easily for sure.
If you wanted to, let's say you wanted to play it at work with a
couple of colleagues, you could do that and maybe just draw 6
cards instead of the 13 because of time constraint.
Yeah, you could, you could do that.
Like there's that freedom. But it's definitely worth it.
It's definitely family friendly. It's a ton of fun, lot of
laughs. It's totally worth it.
So how about number? 3 #3 All right, I'm going to go
with this one. So this is this one for me is
kind of just like kind of crazy because it kind of came out of
left field and there's decent hype around it, but I actually
didn't care about the hype aspect.
So it's called there and back again.
It is a rolling right and like so just like cooperative games
that I wasn't really big on rolling rights was like I would
never even think about playing a rolling right.
I'm like, if I wanted to write like school work, I would go do
that, but I don't want to do that.
So I play board games and people like there's rolling, right.
So I'm like now, but I was sent this game to to cover, which I
was really appreciated by office dog.
I love Lord of the Rings and I have a friend, Tara.
You might have she's been on here I think a couple times.
You might have seen her Tara's Ballot Club.
Yep, she was here talking about study.
Yes, she's on here for study. She taught us how to play study.
Study was great. That was on our episode for
2025. But yeah, this game is just like
I started playing it and I just started realizing because I
guess if you're not a Lord of the Rings fan, it doesn't really
matter. But if you are, it's just really
fun to like kind of like get to walk through Lord of the Rings
through rolling right form. And it's just a really chill
experience to play. So like, you have 12 chapters.
I think maybe 10 could be wrong. I haven't gotten that far yet.
So we don't know. But you have a different
chapters and they go up in complexity, which I think is
just absolutely brilliant because you start off learning
the game at Chapter 1, you open Chapter 2 and you're like this
nuts, where did we just go? This was so.
And it like adds a little bit more and Chapter 3 adds a little
bit more. And then it keeps giving you
harder and harder puzzles to figure out.
And so we're at, we're currently, I think, at chapter 4
and it's a blast. I'm like it.
I'm actually genuinely excited to go like read the story and to
try to figure it out. Also, I've lost by like one
point against Tara every single time.
Frustrating. Can't seem to win.
There's always some line I did the wrong direction right?
Not optimal but it just makes me keep wanting to come back and
play it again. Someone say it makes me want to
come there and back. Nice, nice.
I had you Nice. But.
It's. Great.
Yeah. It's really cool.
It's it's one I have not played. I haven't got a copy of it yet.
So you know, office Dog, if you guys are listening, y'all want
to send me a copy and let me play it and I'll have you on the
show? Yeah, You know, we would love to
have you. Everyone keeps talking about it
and I feel like it's a game I need to experience.
It is good. Well, and the cool part is that
I think that is wins me over even more is we could be playing
like right now doing this exact same thing and we could stream
it. We can play off our phone.
You open your copy, I open my copy and like what Tara and I've
been doing is like, she rolls the dice one turn she tells me
what it is. I set the dice face in front of
me. The next turn, I roll the dice,
tell her what it is. She sets in front of us.
We draft those dice and take our actions.
And like, even if we had four of us, because it plays four, we
could all be on a video call in different parts of the world and
still play together. That's something I really enjoy
about rolling rights in general. And if you haven't figured it
out already, because I know there's some new, new to the
hobby listeners, roll it right, meaning you roll dice and then
you write something right. You might hear us talk about
flipping right or you may even hear us talk about X and right
because there's flipping right, there's there's the rolling
right. There's a lot of different
mechanics where you do a thing and then you write something.
So you may hear that. But what I like about rolling
rights is that we could do that right is that we could play.
I've played a lot of rolling right games virtually like you
were explaining with our friends.
So cool across the pond. I love it.
I'm jealous, though.
I am jealous. Like you get to, you get to play
a game with Tara. We should get you on because
also Cosmic Bend just got it so the four of us could be
traversing through through Lord of the Ring.
Office dog, you got to get on it, man.
You got to give me a copy of this game.
Expensive of a game from what it is it's actually I think it's
like literally a 30 to $40 game, which that is maybe expensive
but for a four player game that you can literally replay because
you can just wipe off the dry erase stuff OK and there's
variations that you can make it harder OK and things like that I
love it it's just really pretty it's really pretty yeah, that's
mine I. Don't.
I don't want to make you guys go back.
As you said, you're on chapter 4.
I don't want to make. You good.
I have. I have all the reasons to try to
beat Tara from losing. So the first game I lost by 40.
I have no idea how that was possible.
I thought I was doing great. I was so excited to share my
number. And then I was like, I made 40
points. She's like, I made 75 and I was
like. Of course.
Wait, what? The next game I was like, that
does it, I'm going to focus in still lost by 1.
So now I'm incentivized to go back and win in a cooperative
man. In a cooperative man.
Yeah, you know. This, this slight competitive
streak, Yeah, It'll never go away for you, No.
No, even in a cooperative game, I'm like, dude, I rolled way
better than you rolled last time.
Actually, that's not true with dice.
Everybody knows if you watch any of my YouTube videos, I can't
roll dice. That's just my bane of my
existence. Yeah, that is Yep, Yep,
absolutely. I can have 1000 dice and I will
still lose whatever roll that needs to be at like it's just
crazy and like the people like all you need to do is roll, not
this. There's five other sides of the
dice that we can we can work with, and you're like.
And that's what you're going to roll.
Yeah. Oh yeah.
So how about #2 You ready for number 2?
Yeah, hit me up. So #2 is Sky team.
Yeah. Yeah.
This was a huge, huge game back. Like what is it 2-3 years ago?
It won the Spiel, the Yards last year and it's the first, It's
the first two player game to win that award.
Right. Again, I mean, everybody was
talking about it, everyone's playing it.
Yes, yeah, two player cooperative game, a design by
Luke Remit I think, I'm pretty sure he's French.
The idea is that you're a pilot and copilot of a commercial
airliner and you are at 6000 feet and you are on approach to
runway. That is the set up.
OK, now you have the, the pilot has four dice, the copilot has
four dice and there are two phases.
The first phase is the planning phase where we can talk about,
OK, so we need to do this, we need to flap so the, you know,
the altitude or the, you know, the pitch and the Yaw.
And you got to watch out for this and the complexity just it
gets more and more complex, but we're working together.
Here's the catch. And I know this is not very
thematic or realistic, but I don't know how this game works
without we get to the second phase.
We, we roll our dice, an intern order pilot, copilot or copilot
pilot depending upon the round because like I said, it's 6000
feet. So basically each round you drop
1000 feet. That's going to happen no matter
what. So you're going to play 6
rounds. Once you roll your dice, you and
your partner are not allowed to speak to each other at all.
I think it's a real fun part of the game though.
It is. No, it totally is.
We learned with my wife and I, we've been playing for a while.
I am always the copilot. Don't put me in charge, which I
guess is pretty realistic considering she's my boss in
real life as well. So I guess that works.
But the reality is, so when you place your dice out, there's
certain rules, there's certain placements and depending upon
whether you're the pilot or the copilot.
So for the pilot, you have to lower the landing gear.
Well, there's only three front, left and right and the number on
the die doesn't matter. But if you're the copilot,
you're adjusting the flaps and they have to be done in order.
So the first one, the dice result has to be a one or two.
So you have to do that one first.
The second one is a 2 and 3, three and four, five and right,
you get it. But so those are a little bit,
and then there's brakes and you know, and then of course, as the
game progresses, there's even more complex rules for dice
placement. Sometimes you have to adjust
for. When the game is dice, I'm out.
It's it's. My plane's crashing.
Well, but it's not what you think.
It's not, it's not going to be the same thing.
But the plane does often crash. Well, the other thing too is
like you have, you have airplanes in front, you have air
traffic in front of you. So you have to put a die out to
contact the radio tower to say, hey, get this plane out of my
way, I'm coming in for an approach, right?
But we're doing all this while not saying a word.
This is like a good moment where they built this to be like
couples, non couples. We're going to, we're going to
see how you guys can communicate without communicating.
See if you really know. Let's see.
Well, that's what's crazy awesome about cooperative games.
You're teaching failure and success.
You're teaching cooperative play.
You're teaching working together to achieve a goal.
You're working together to sometimes you don't achieve that
goal. Sometimes Bob times you need to
be able to communicate while you're with each other without
communicating. Sometimes the murderer or killer
or other people are listening in and you need to zone in, right?
I mean, it's like so many life. Skills.
It's so true. It is so true.
And it's, it's, I think the reality is the fact that you
can't speak. And This is why the game doesn't
work otherwise, because like, I can't, once I roll the dice, I
can't be like, OK, I've got a four, where should I put it?
You can't do it. You just you just have to put it
out on the board. And you, they have to trust that
you're going to try to make the best choice of the action and
you're going to trust them to make the best choice.
So it builds the, IT builds the tension, right, of what it must
be like in the cockpit of a commercial airliner when you're
working together. I wouldn't do it.
But not speaking to each other. Yeah.
Because I know if I'm a copilot.
Yeah, I'm not. You know, I'd be like, hey,
you're in charge, pilot, but I'm not going to talk to you.
Hands off. Yeah, Yeah.
No, it's cool. That's cool.
Yeah, but it's it's a fantastic game.
There's an it's, it's very small.
It's it's widely available anywhere board games are sold.
I don't even. I think you can find it in
Walmart and Target now. Amazon.
Yep, you can find it on Amazon. It's it's relatively, relatively
a lot of fun. Again, it's it's two player
only. You cannot play it solo because
that defeats the purpose and there are no more players.
So it's it's worth checking out. It's one of my favorites.
I love it when it hits the table.
We have not yet gotten to the expansion because I think we
have three more runway approaches to complete before we
can move on to the expansion, which is adds more and it adds
turbulence. Oh, that's got to be fun and
crazy without talking, just blowing you around everywhere.
I. Had no idea how that works.
That's going to. Be cool.
That's it. Yeah.
So that is number 2, which brings us to our last one,
number one cooperative game. And this is our campaign game,
right? Because we we promised we were
going to. Yeah, it's a campaign.
It's a campaign. It's not a game that it's not a
game you play once and you're done because there's there's a
story, right? I mean, it's, yeah.
Yeah. I mean, yeah, it's Dark Tower,
which is it's amazing. So like if you're old as us, you
there's a they made it back in the day was the night it was 19.
84 I I believe it was 80. I think it was 80.
Four. Yeah.
And like, they have the Dark Tower.
There literally was a tower in the middle of the thing.
Barely worked and functioned, but it did.
But it was super. I think it might have been
Hasbro. I don't even remember but Super
at a school game they remade it restoration games and the tower
that sits in front of the table now is crazy.
Like if you want a good table experience and just nuts.
Like you put in 2D batteries or whatever C batteries and this
thing has an app and it rotates, the tower rotates, it drops
skulls out of it, pieces come off of it to show different
symbols, it lights up red. It does everything besides
pushing out smoke, which I feel like they could have.
They could have made it work. They could have it also features
it features something that you and I absolutely love yes, and
that's a round. Board A circular board.
Yes, we love circular boards. For those of you who are new to
the channel, if you go back to last year, you'll discover that
Adam and I both have an affinity for circular boards.
There has been recently, yeah. I'll literally buy a game
because has a circular board. There has been a recent rise in
these, yeah. That's a great one of Whispers
has a circular board. Seti Seti has a circular board.
Yep, our. Tamage for Maggio has a circular
board. Arctica has Ivy's.
Ivy's game. Which one is a veiled fate?
Veiled fate, yeah. Circular board.
Huge circular board. Yes and yeah, it's a blast.
But Dark Tower, the so crazy part about Dark Tower was so
maybe some people want to agree with me on this, but there's a
game called Western Legends. It is.
It's pretty fun. I love the theme.
I love Western games. We hadn't get it to the table
that much. I saw Dark Tower come out.
I played it with Steven, a national board of game guy, and
I'm not AI, was not a big cooperative player, and the game
drew me in immediately because of the fact that I handle my
Kingdom. I am the Lord of my own Kingdom
and we're all working together. So essentially what you are is
there's a dark tower in the center of the board of the
circular board that's beautiful. You have the West, the east N
the South kingdoms. Everybody controls the Kingdom.
Everybody's player has an ability and everybody's player
ability helps everybody in the entire vast Kingdom, but it also
helps you in your sliver of your Kingdom.
Then you put out a locations and you put out objectives and you
put out goals and then you put out monsters and then you have
monsters in your Kingdom in region and someone has monsters
in theirs. You have a quest in your stuff,
but you have to go to the Kingdom of the east to get
whatever it is and go back to the West.
And there's like all this different moving parts.
But I think what drew me in was the fact that like, my Kingdom
is my Kingdom and I can better it and do whatever I want or
leave it and not care. And while you're doing all this
stuff, you're dropping skulls into the top of the and it's
other massive tower. And at the end of every round,
the bad guys get to go and move and the tower spins and skulls
fall out of the tower, little tiny skulls and where they land
on whatever Kingdom side they fall on, you put that like
damage into your Kingdom. It's mind blowing.
If you get too much damage, it starts to build, blow buildings
up, but you can't take actions. And then you get glyphs on your
side in your Kingdom that don't let you be able to do different
actions. And then now your Kingdom, when
someone crosses from their Kingdom into your Kingdom, now
they're affected by whatever is happening in your Kingdom.
And I just thought that that was like the most like
quarterbacking people could be like, we should do this.
And I'd be like, well, I would, but my Kingdom needs help, right
or not. And it's just, Yep, it's cool,
super cool. It's, I think you're right.
The one thing I absolutely just adore about this game is, again,
there can't be any table captaining because you've got to
do what's best for the entire table.
And sometimes that means walking away from your Kingdom and other
times it means putting your Kingdom first.
So it's just, it's really conditional.
And there are things that trigger where you take these
little plastic skulls and you drop them in the top of the
tower and they will either fall out if the doors are open on all
the four sides, or they'll just store there.
And so it builds up the tension because, like you said, it's
battery operated, it's app driven, meaning that you have to
have an app on a tablet or a phone, and it syncs up via
Bluetooth to the tower. It'll rotate.
It will light up. Like you talked about the there
are glyphs on the sides. Those glyphs will light up,
which will prohibit certain abilities.
We're asymmetrical where we each have different powers or
abilities. It's just, it's incredible.
It's such a good game with a great narrative.
Yeah, amazing. The only thing that we don't
have is the miniatures for all the monsters.
Those are represented by cardboard chips.
Everything else we've got, I had to, you know me.
I was like, I know you did. I love the I love the table.
If I have this big tower, I have to like have.
I didn't paint my minis though so they're just black, but they
look awesome. It's OK, they look great.
They're super cool, they look great.
I, I think this is this is another game that's in my top
five most beautiful games on the table.
That tower, that tower is amazing.
Right. It's, I mean, it's crazy.
It's easily a foot tall, Yeah, might have been more than 12
inches. It might be I'm trying to find
my. Box and it's over there it's a
good 6 to 8 inches in diameter and it just sits Yeah, it's not
it's plastic, but it's that dark Crimson Yeah, it looks really
cool yeah, it's. Worthy.
I guess there's the other thing to say about it is if you don't
like app based games, it's probably not for you.
That's true. Because it is an entirely app
based game. I don't think it in some app
based games, I feel like hinder games or take away the
interaction of people and that's like you're going the opposite
direction of what the board of games should be.
But in this it, it's just a tool to make sure that everybody
understands what's available. And you still have to be like,
what are we all going to do? What should we do?
This is in my Kingdom and someone gets to hit the button
to end the round and everyone's always like because the as you
hit end round, the whole thing shifts and moves and like bad
things happen, events. And then you can also play on
what do they call it, gritty mode.
You play in gritty mode. So there's like a normal mode,
there's a cooperative mode, there is a race mode, a will.
You should try it once, but it is awful.
It's anti climatic, it is very bad.
It's it was not made to be It's supposed to be a cooperative
game. So we do a race where everyone's
racing to get to finish a goal first.
We tried it and like it just like the ending was just like,
and that was it. We're just all just like we did
all of this to lead to that. But it is made as a cooperative
game. And so you're literally like the
whole point is like it still brings everybody together.
But if you don't like app based games.
Then it's not entirely for you, but there you there you have it.
That's. But it is.
It is a ton of fun. That is five cooperative
recommendations from the two of us.
So again, we've got run a sewer, A terror escape just one from
here and back again. Is that right?
That the full title from Here and Back Again, Sky Theme and
Return to the Dark Town 5 cooperative games that you can
get at any local game store or on Amazon or wherever.
And we don't have any sponsors, so I'm not going to try to
promote anyone else. But yeah, check those out.
They're anywhere they're worthy. And yeah, buy, buy it, find a
copy that a friend's got, whatever it takes.
Yeah. And build more cooperation
because there's enough hate and device in this right now.
So let's let's work as a team. I love that 100%.
I love Exactly. Yeah.
So, Adam, thank you so much. Thank you.
Yeah. Thank.
You so much for having me here. It was great.
Are you kidding? Yeah, this is amazing.
Tell everyone, especially those who are new to the channel,
where they can find you. Yeah, you can find me on
Instagram at Tabletop Vibes. You can also find us on YouTube,
tabletop vibes and our website tabletopvibes.com and yeah, we
we do a lot of cool things and it's we always have a good time.
Try to bring good vibes cooperative non cooperative
gaming. Owen writes these days
everything, Yeah, we're just excited to be a part of P JS
community and get to hang out with him and and talk to you
all. Well, thank you.
Thank you so much for that. And check out Adam's channel.
You guys are in for a treat. And if you want to know anything
about any game that's going to be launching on Kickstarter now
or soon, he's probably covered it.
Be sure to check it out, guys. Don't forget to hit the like and
subscribe button. And here's a question for all of
you so you guys can send comments to me.
And I genuinely want to know what is your favorite
cooperative board game? So send that to me in the
comments. And yeah, we will respond.
As always, be kind to one another and let's play more
games.