I’m always looking for simple board games to play in between my more complex games. I played Unstable Unicorns first and I loved the art on the cards and how easy it is to teach other people the game. I purchased a copy of Llamas Unleashed as Unstable Games / TeeTurtle were tabling at a convention I went to. I had the game on my shelf for about a year and a half before finally being able to play it on a game night. Llamas Unleashed is so simple, cute, and filled with dad jokes.

Llamas Unleashed and Unstable Unicorns are essentially the game. The goal of Llamas Unleashed is to have the most Llamas, Goats, Rams, or Alpacas in your stable while also sabotaging other players’ attempts to do this as well. Each turn, a player will draw a card, play a card and then pass it to the next player. There are animal cards that can be placed in a stable, magical animal card where there are special powers associated. There are upgrade cards to help your stable along with downgrade cards that can be played in another person’s stable. There’s a lot of variety of what can be done on each turn.

If you’re not a fan of dad jokes, you probably won’t enjoy this game. There are so many puns on all the cards. My uncle would laugh whenever he drew a new card because it was centered on some pun. I imagine what the writing table at Unstable Games would be like as they come up with the wording on the cards. That would be a fun business meeting to be a part of I’m sure. As mentioned, this is a simple game. It’s easy for me to explain the rules and for my friends to pick up on the game quickly. This would be a fun game to bring to a brewery because there aren’t a lot of setups required and it doesn’t take that long to play.

I would definitely play Llamas Unleashed again. The game is cute, easy to learn, and an overall relaxing game to play.

I have been trying to go through all my board games and play any that I haven’t played yet. One of those games was Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective. My brother bought me the game as a birthday gift a few years ago and I kept forgetting to bring it to a game night. Last weekend, I finally got to play the first two mysteries in Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective and I wish I had played this game earlier. Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective is an easy-to-learn, detective-solving game that can be played with friends, family, or by yourself.

Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective has ten mysteries to solve. Each mystery has a case file for that particular mystery. This booklet will also have information on leads that can be gathered to help solve the mystery. Besides the case file, there’s a newspaper that’s dated on or near the date of the crime which might also contain leads to follow up on. The goal of the game is to be able to collect enough information to answer the questions in the case. Once the questions are answered, the solution can be revealed. There’s a scoring system to see if you or your group can score more points than Sherlock Holmes. If you score more points than Sherlock Holmes then that’s worth bragging about!

As mentioned, our group completed two case files. The first case file seemed a lot more straightforward. We had to solve the murder of Courtney Allen, the owner of a gun company who was murdered behind his office. There was evidence that was collected at the scene along with his notebook which indicated dates and phrases that weren’t clear right away. As our group put everything together, we ended up guessing correctly who killed Courtney Allen. We were a little off about why he was murdered, but our group felt proud that we figured it out. The second case also featured a murder of a prominent general. Unlike the previous case, this case was a little bit convoluted. We weren’t sure who killed the general as it seemed like we were missing information. Interestingly enough, there was information in the first newspaper from the first case that helped us with this one. I loved that each newspaper from each case built off of the other.

Another reason I liked Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective was the amount of gameplay in the box. There are ten mysteries to solve and our group completed two of them. This leaves eight mysteries that still need to be solved. I kept comparing the Hunt a Killer box to this game as Hunt a Killer only had one case while Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective had ten. My brother told me that there are expansions to Sherlock Holmes which provide additional mysteries besides the ten included in this game. I like the ability to be able to replay a game over and over again versus playing it once and not seeing a reason to play it again.

Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective is a game I would play again because there are still mysteries to solve. I like that this game can be played alone as there aren’t that many games out there that are single-player. I can’t wait to go through the other mysteries and hopefully score more points than Sherlock Holmes.

I have talked quite a bit about Dungeons & Dragons as I’m in a long-term campaign now, but one of my other favorite roleplaying games is Vampire the Masquerade. I first played Vampire the Masquerade at Gen Con and I was immediately intrigued. While browsing through Steam, I found these Vampire the Masquerade visual novel games. I played Vampire the Masquerade Shadows of New York back in 2021 without realizing that there was a game that took place before Shadows of New York. I carved out time to play Coteries of New York and I loved how this game ties into Shadows of New York.

I noticed that in Vampire the Masquerade Coteries of New York, I was able to choose my clan. The three options were: Brujah, Ventrue, and Toreador. Each clan has different personality characteristics. I opted for Ventrue to start even though I usually favor the Toreador. In most of my campaigns, I pick the Toreador clan for my character. Since there are different clan options, the game has a different start. For Ventrue, my character talks about her corporate life and how it’s a grind. She’s asked to go to a work meeting at a fancy bar. She awakes with no memory of the meeting and with a burning hunger. After feeding on a waiter, she’s rescued by Q’adir al-Asmai, a sheriff who resides in New York. After being brought in front of a trial, she’s taken under the wing of Sophie Langley, a prominent figure, who wants to teach our character how to act and behave in vampire society.

First of all, I felt that there is a lot more replayability in this game versus Shadows of New York. There are numerous side quests to interact with and the game is set up where there isn’t enough time to meet everyone while the main story unfolds. There are still several side characters who I wasn’t able to interact as much with. The side quests vary such as investigating a serial killer to confronting a reporter who’s gathering intel on Sophie. I do plan on playing through the game at least two more times with the other clans. There might not be that much of a difference in the story, but I want to unlock the steam achievements.

With Coteries of New York coming before Shadows of New York, this game sets up the next game perfectly. I wish I played them in order because I do think it would have been much more satisfying. I do recommend playing the games in chronological order as it interweaves the games together and you see the same side characters pop up in both games.

As always, Coteries of New York is visually stunning. The way worldbuilding is explained in the Vampire the Masquerade rules, your character sees the world through a darker lens. The games match that tone. Each scene is darker and the shapes in the background will move. For example, I was in a parking garage, and out of the corner of my eye, I would see a shadow move through a window. It’s unsettling.

I loved playing through Coteries of New York. I think I liked this game more than Shadows of New York, but I still liked playing through them both. Both games are developed by Draw Distance and I hope the studio would consider making more Vampire games.

Since I have been regularly playing roleplaying games, I have been trying to keep up to date on any news or game releases coming from the TTRPG (Tabletop Role Playing Game) community. As one would have it, there has been a huge piece of news that I have seen being discussed everywhere. It relates to Wizards of the Coast (WotC) / Hasbro and their OGL (open gaming license) stance. At first, I wasn’t quite sure what the controversy was, but now that I have dug into it more, I can see why fans were angry. I wanted to delve into this a bit more as I think this is something that everyone should be aware of if they play Dungeons & Dragons on a regular basis.

To start off, an Open Gaming License is a copyright license where players can stream, discuss, and play Dungeons & Dragons without fear of violating copyright laws or being sued. I think about Not Another DnD Podcast being able to exist without WotC coming to them for using their game without their permission. While many Dungeons & Dragons streamers play the game using the rules created by WotC the worlds that are created are entirely built by the streamers. It makes it complicated to try and regulate that since a lot of this world-building is original.

Moving into the controversy, there was a leak online where WotC was considering modifying its OGL. WotC was contemplating adding a caveat that if streamers made a certain profit from playing Dungeons & Dragons, they would have to report that to WotC. WotC would reserve the right to take a portion of the profits. Based on the article I linked above, it looks like the dollar amount was $50,000. Additionally, any creators earning more than $750,000 would pay a 25% royalty to WotC.

If the above is true, who cares? Why is this a bad thing? My first thought on this is that it doesn’t make sense to me. In my opinion, if players buy roleplaying books, those books and any creations from the books are owned by the players. I think one of the biggest ways to help invite or welcome new players is for people to see the game being played in pop culture. This in turn can help increase profit for WotC since new roleplayers will buy the books. Another thought that occurred to me is how greedy this feels. 25% royalty may not seem like a lot for those making above $750,000, but it still equates to $187,500 that WotC would collect. The streamers who do make that much in profit are often trying to do this as a full-time job, so they would need to pay taxes on the profits they make. Based on all this, it feels more like a punishment than a good thing coming from WotC. Another fear that I had in reviewing all of this is how this could change. If WotC made this change and it was accepted, they could, in theory, lower the dollar threshold. They could make an amendment and say that anyone who makes $10,000 in profit would now be included. This wouldn’t go over with fans, but it could happen if this change to the OGL was successful.

The reaction to this has been furious and quick. Fans canceled their D&D Beyond subscriptions along with encouraging players to try other roleplaying games. Paizo, the game company behind Pathfinder and Starfinder made a statement that they would keep their OGL the same. WotC did release a statement on January 13th where they mentioned listening to fans and providing an update to their OGL which so far, doesn’t include the above changes. Personally, I feel disappointed that WotC tried to be sneaky about it as they wouldn’t have the profits without the players in the community. It feels greedy to me and I don’t want content creators to be impacted by this.

If you’re still left with questions, I’ll link a few additional articles that I was reading through when I put together this post. In summary, I think WotC shouldn’t enact these changes as it would impact content creators.

Insider – Dungeons & Dragons Change

Polygon – Wizards of the Coast Licensing

Gizmodo – Open Gaming License

For the past two weekends in a row, I have been able to devote time to playing through a Nancy Drew game. In general, most of the Nancy Drew games take me 4-5 hours to complete, so it’s been nice having that time to set toward each game. Playing Nancy Drew: Treasure in the Royal Tower, this might be one of my least favorite Nancy Drew games I have played thus far.

Nancy is on a ski vacation in Wisconsin. As a side note, who goes to Wisconsin for skiing? This isn’t important to the game’s plot, but I thought it was kind of odd. Anyway, Nancy is snowed in her resort and is told that the library was broken into and vandalized. Additionally, Nancy is alerted to treasures and secrets in the tower which prompts her to investigate.

I mentioned how this was one of my least favorite Nancy Drew games that I have played. First of all, there isn’t a journal in this game. In my previous post, I mentioned how in some games, Nancy has her journal that tracks her tasks. This game doesn’t have this, so it was more for me to keep track of what Nancy had to complete or figure out. Another slightly annoying part of this game was the alarm clock. In some of the Nancy Drew games where Nancy is isolated in one location, she can only meet with certain characters at certain times. This means that Nancy has to go to her room, and set her alarm, so she can wake up and talk with the characters. I found myself spending much of the game navigating back to her room and setting her alarm. I found this to be repetitive and time-consuming. The final thing I wanted to add was how I found this game to be more boring than the other Nancy Drew games. Nancy was often doing errands for the characters instead of solving puzzles or playing mini-games. It felt like I was grinding through the tasks versus actually enjoying how the tasks came together.

There was one moment in the game when I couldn’t but laugh. Earlier on, Nancy finds fake passports in one of the character’s bags. Nancy brings it up to that character and that character laughs it off. That character ended up being the culprit. I laugh because if you were to find fake passports, that’s a red flag. It’s funny because in some Nancy Drew games, I end up predicting who the culprit is and this was one of them.

While Nancy Drew: Treasure in the Royal Tower was okay, it still puts me closer to completing all the games. I have one more Nancy Drew game in my library before I have to buy the next bunch. As mentioned previously, all the Nancy Drew PC games can be purchased on Steam.