by cmontgo2
@ Spinoza: I think Runewars is better than Twilight Imperium.@ Junjun: Thanks for the entertaining, intelligently written essay. I agreed with nearly all your points, even though I have never been a Eurogamer - I play them, but I don't like them as much as I do wargames and almost any other type of game. I particularly agreed with your insights regarding winning. I am *not* a guy who wins most of the time, I whine sometimes, but I am also very forgiving of opponents who do. What I can't tolerate are players who can't be humble in victory.
I think you will find more narrative . . . more story-telling . . . in games that diverge from the Euro-game spectrum. I enjoy games with "weighted-random" results . . . most wargames are this way. Even if you play the perfect game, you aren't guaranteed to win - you should - and you will most-times on a statistical basis - but you aren't guaranteed. This keeps the game more tense-filled, and emotionally and intellectually connected to the players. It also makes it harder to make decisions, because you are dealing with probabilities rather than 100% guaranteed results. So, in something like wargames (my main gaming genre, which includes Runewars, btw - I cast a large net with "what is a wargame") - in something like wargames, deciding where to make a stand, or how to approach an attack you are looking for what has the best chance of success, not for the move that is guaranteed to succeed, because there aren't any.
Once you get away from Euros, you also see a vast, complex array of mechanics. Not that Euros don't have lots of complexity and nuance and cool mechanics, but that they share lots of the same features. Wargames (and Ameritrash as a partially overlaying Venn-diagram sub-set of that) run a vast, vast, gamut of conflicting, competing, and alternating mechanics so suit nearly anyone.
Welcome.
@ Everyone: This is a great discussion. Subscribed.
