Some really fantastic games tonight at the ‘What Are We Playing’ night at the Tap Room! Got to play Cash n’ Guns and Two Rooms and a Boom for the first time! Both are completely amazing and way more fun than I expected.
As I figured, Cash n’ Guns was Reservoir Dogs: The Game and was fun to play with complete strangers. In short, the players are dividing up loot after a heist, and in true crime fashion are backstabbing each other. Each round players point their guns simultaneously at each other, after playing one of their Bang or Click cards. Players who wuss out or are shot don’t get to divide up loot that round, and you play until everyone’s out of bullet cards. Light, silly, and you get to horse around with foam guns.
Two Rooms and a Boom almost stole the night, as we got to play roughly 25 person games hosted by some of the nice fellows from Shut Up and Sit Down. In Two Rooms and a Boom, players are either on a red team or blue team, with secret role cards, in one of two rooms. Each round, both rooms vote on a leader, who chooses hostages to send to the other side. One blue player is the President, and one red player is the Bomber. If the game ends with both in the same room, the red team wins! During deliberation, players chat and generally reveal either the color of their card or their role to each other. It feels like a silly cocktail party where some Bad Shit is about to go down.
In the second game I played, I was a neutral character called the victim who only wins of they get blown up. I knew who the bomber and president were, and on the very last turn, our leader accidentally sent the bomber away, inadvertently saving the president and preventing me from dying. Even with perfect information, you’re still powerless on your own.
Also managed to play Two Bullets for the very first time! It has some issues that need to be ironed out, (as written, once you get lots of money you’re hard to stop! Player elimination sucks, and some of the bidding/betting rules needed to be tightened up), but we ended up having fun betting on whether the other players would live or die! I ended the game broke, and was handed a revolver with five chambers fired… So I couldn’t afford to spin (pay any one currency card), and was forced to thus pull the trigger and reveal the bullet. Blam.
As promised, here’s a link to the prototype PDF for those at Gen Can’t 2014! It’s only ever been played once, and (is probably broken.) Enjoy!
https://www.dropbox.com/s/orkd6grdjruv1sx/twobullets-final-layout.pdf
I also pulled out fuckyeahnobenefits for the tired crowd, and after reading most of the cards and laughing their asses off, we played the first half of a game! It went a little more slowly than normal (alcohol + 2am + exhausted), but we had a few enjoyable rounds before everyone left and we called it a night (We made it to Tuesday, and almost no one completed any assignments). It’s really great to play with new people and see them read through the cards and laugh. The best compliment we got was along the lines of, ‘Individually the cards are all very funny, but there’s a dark streak running through them all that makes them feel real. It makes me feel like I wasted my twenties.’ Amen.
So happy to pull the games out, meet a bunch of new people, and listen to what they had to say! And with that, it’s time to go to bed at 6am, and get ready for my 8am No Benefits playtest (oh god).
