Other Tabletop Games You Like

I'll start.  There's two I'm particularly fond of, because both rely almost entirely on player interaction and the players actually making pretty much all the action.

Fiasco: Best described by the THREE episodes Wheaton did about it on, uh, Tabletop but in summary; dice determine relations between players, motivations, objects involved in those motivations, and location.  It's basically a directed improv experience with the dice thrown in to add random elements to it and it's a lot of fun if you have a group of people who A: Are good at improv, B: Friends, or C: All of the above.  The name of the game also kind of says it all; the object isn't to win, or even the end goal at all, it's all about crafting the story and enjoying the cooperative storytelling.

Diplomacy: Now, I found out somewhat recently I've been playing a modified version of Diplomacy for... uh, forever, but this one revolves around the players choosing nations in the European area to run, you produce troops and there's bonuses, all the usual Risk sort of stuff, but with two important catches.  One, the players interacting one with another is absolutely crucial to everything; making deals, threats, bargains, whatever it's all about that.  If you played without player interaction a Diplomacy game would end in 20 minutes and be very boring.  That's literally the meat of the game.  But the other twist is the modified thing; see, one player acts as a neutral 'judge' (if you trust the player this can often times just be one of the sides, there's ways to make this work) and each turn the players write down their actions that turn on a slip of paper and hand it to him in a way that no one sees.  The fun part is all turns are resolved at once BUT... only the results are listed, not the means.  In other words, if I'm Italy and attack France and succeed at injuring France, the results that are said out loud are "France loses 2 units." but NOTHING ELSE.  So you have no real idea who's moving where against what, and the level of subterfuge and negotiation and diplomacy and layers of manipulation are absolutely fascinating and a ball to play.

Android: A heavily Bladerunner inspired sci-fi noir Euro-style board game about trying to solve a murder in the future. Great setting and atmosphere, with the game taking place in New Angeles, the Moon, and the space elevator that connects the two locations. Each player takes on the role of a unique hero, each with their own strengths and weaknesses like Caprice Nisei, the lonely and unstable psychic clone. You score points in a number of ways from solving the murder, to untangling the conspiracy behind it, to overcoming your character's personal quests.

The cool thing about the personal quests is that success or failure will unlock a different ending to their story, both horribly bad or awesomely good.


Lords of Waterdeep: Another Euro-style game. You are a Masked Lord of Waterdeep who is allied with a faction such as the Harpers or the Silverstars. You are trying to manipulate events in Waterdeep so that your faction can dominate the politics of the greatest city of Faerun. You do so by collecting heroes and sending them on quests, buy buildings around town to unlock additional actions on people's turns, and use intrigues to gain advantages or delay rivals. Player with the most points wins. Best played with at least one fan of the Forgotten Realms so they can explain the references to you.


Love Letter: This little micro game published and localized by AEG is a real gem (The original game came from Japan. Sorry, I don't know the Japanese name.). The premise is simple--you are trying to woo the princess of a made up, if blatantly Italian, city state. You do so by getting the various members of the court to pass her your romantic letters.

Play on the other hand is easy to teach and learn. Your goal is to remove the other players from the round by playing the various courtier cards, which each do a different thing. For example, a Guard lets you guess what card someone has in their hand. If you are right, they are knocked out of the round.

Each player begins with one card. On your turn you draw a card and then play a card. First person to remove the other players wins the round. First player to win 3 rounds wins the game. Very fast, very fun.


Munchkin: The classic tabletop RPG parody card game. I'll let Wil Wheaton explain it and show you how it works.

My family and pre-college friends were not big board game players at all, so most of my experiences were over the past few years. Some of my favorites are:

MidEvil
There's no other way to say it: MidEvil is a tabletop version of Army of Darkness. You and several other players venture out to either kill 25 points worth of skeletons/zombies or get the necronomicon and get back to a specific point. However, only one can win, so you will probably get stabbed in the back when you are close to the necronomicon. Players get cards they can play to help themselves or hinder their enemies.

Cards Against Humanity
No big surprise here. These kind of games count, right? If you don't know about this game yet, it's basically about trying to be as goofy as possible by combining phrases written on cards. Apples to Apples is another game I enjoy that falls under this category.

Citadels
Card game where each player drafts a character and attempts to build 8 buildings while sabotaging the others and defending against sabotage attempts. Seems pretty simple, but each character has special abilities like killing another character, stealing gold, swapping buildings, etc. It's a bit hard to explain in short since each character really has interesting things they can do to change the game, but you quickly pick it up once you start playing it. This game is great fun in larger groups.

Also, as an honorable mention... The Star Wars CCG.

I don't have a preferred Tabletop game since I never had anyone to play with, but I always wanted to play Diplomacy. I tried to do so on a modded map of Starcraft 2 but there's never enough people. So I always played Risk instead.

Lords of Waterdeep looks interesting too.

My wife and I play Gloom a lot, and a friend just got me the Cthulhu Gloom deck for Christmas so we're looking forward to trying that.

If it's not obvious, I like games that primarily lean on creativity and player interaction.  Got another one for ya, seen a few dozen variations on it but the one I used to play most often was called Werewolf.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mafia_%28party_game%29
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_QRczGzXqw&list=SP4F80C7D2DC8D9B6C

I've also played every single other game mentioned by you guys so far and I'd like to say, Lords of Waterdeep is really awesome to play if you have a good group.  That being said, as much as Munchkin can be fun, I am REALLY bad at it.

Oh yeah, I've heard of Werewolf and The Resistance obviously since I watch Table Top. Looks like a lot of fun but my gaming buddies prefer Euro games these days, lol.

Ah, yes, we used to play Mafia in Scouts. Forgot about that; fun little game.

Arch, you mentioned Werewolf. Was it anything like this?

Yeah that's another variant on Werewolf.  Adds a lot with the extra roles and cards and stuff.  

The fun thing about Werewolf is you really do have to trust the people you're playing with.  That may sound odd but what I mean is, the temptation to cheat and peek during the night phases is pretty big, but doing so really completely ruins it, so... yeah, trust.

Mindtrap. Not sure you can call it tabletop, since there's not much of a tray, just question cards and an hourglass, but i like it because it's neither up to a die roll, nor what knowledge you had beforehand. It's all lateral thinking and logic, so win or lose is all up to you, and the question card thing keeps it short and sweet, and doesn't let it drag itself down.

So it's pretty much the fighting game of tabletops.

... I have none. Considering I lived most of my early life changing states every 2 years or so, it was difficult to create and keep friends, so having tabletop games was a waste of money unless it could be played with only two players, 'cuz of mah younger bro. And in my adult life, the place I live in is like the freaking Sahara desert for gaming in general.

That said, I really liked playing Clue, because it was the only game I ever remember playing that was not a RPG.

I love Clue also. I prefer the Master Detective version they released for the anniversary way back in '88 that adds more suspects, more rooms, more weapons, and another secret passage but I'll play classic as well.

Couldn't think of a better place to put this: