Once Upon A Time

Once Upon a Time is a great interactive and cooperative card game from Atlas Games. Players have a hand of cards including an ending card and start off by saying "Once Upon a Time" . First play tells a story using the cards from their hand. For example, if  a player had a "princess" card in their hand, they could start "Once upon a time, there was a princess" and play the princess card. If another player had a card allowing them to steal after a character card is played, they could play it and take over telling the story.

The players take turns controlling the storyline through playing cards from their hands and stealing the story from other players with the object of telling a good story, emptying their hands and finally playing their ending card such as "And they lived happily ever after" or "And the enchantment was broken."

There are several expansion sets for the game, including Seafaring Tales and Knightly Tales. Games Magazine counted the game as one of its Top 100 games and Pyramid Magazine rated it one of the best games of the Millenium

Godzilla Cards in Ikoria

Here is a list of the Godzilla themed cards appearing in the new Ikoria set. These cards will appear in what WOTC is now calling the draft (standard) booster and the higher end (and more expensive) collector boosters. None, apparently, will appear in the single color Theme Boosters 

Online D&D

Sys is not running the store game on Roll 20 due to allergies kicking up. Jason Mollett has offered to run a 2nd edition game on Zoom at 7 p.m. tonight. Create a 2nd edition single class good character or 6/6 multi class character and join the game. Jason will also have 2nd ed pregenerated characters for those who are not familiar without access to a 2nd ed players handbook.

Magic Ikoria

Got some more info on Magic Ikoria today. WOTC has worked a deal with Toho Studios to incorporated classic monsters from the Godzilla movies into the set. No idea how many of the monsters from the movies will appear in the set but a total of 19 cards will receive what WOTC calls the Godzilla series treatment. 15 of these will appear in the booster boxes, 1 will appear as the Buy It Buy the Box card and 3 will appear only in Japanese series boosters.

So far, we know that Mothra, King Ghiderah, Gigan and Godzilla will appear in the set. No word yet on how many other creatures from the films will get the Magic treatment.

Store Layout

Brian has been doing a lot of work in the store this week, moving things around and relaying shelves. We will do a video walkthrough tomorrow afternoon to show you the changes in layout.

Brian Blume Passes Away

Once of the co-founders of TSR, Brian Blume, passed away last Friday at age 70 from dementia and Parkinson's Disease. Blume met Gary Gygax at one of the early GenCon gaming conventions and together they, along with Donald Kaye, founded TSR (Tactical Studies Rules) with funding from Blume's father.

Blume wrote or contributed to several of TSR's early products including Eldrich Wizardry and Boot Hill. He was also responsible for introducing D&D to Europe when he sent a copy of D&D to Games Workshop, which decided the game was far better than anything produced in Europe at the time and became D&D's European distributor.

Blume was also instrumental in the power struggle within TSR that eventually led to Gary Gygax selling his shares and leaving the company. Blume also left the company about the same time. Most of his subsequent game work involved cartography, most notably with White Wolf

Paranoia RPG

Followup  to today's FB live video about the Paranoia RPG, players need a very dark sense of humor when playing this game. They also need to understand that they are at the mercy of Friend Computer and they are essentially cogs in a machine. It is fun to argue back to the Computer as long as you understand that the outcome will be that character's immediate termination for treason.  Anyone who takes the game too seriously is in for disappointment. That is why you have 5 additional clones. You are probably going to say something wrong, push the wrong button or go into the wrong place and get killed.

Of course, if you are the sort who thrives on creating chaos in the game,  you can do that and even get away with killing fellow player characters, because almost any action can be justified as "treason". Of course, do it to much and your fellow players will probably kill you off, because almost any action can be justified as "treason".

Every player belongs to a secret society and has a mutant power, both of which are treasonous so revealing them is grounds for termination. Generally, players have secret objectives to complete during their missions. Successfully completing those missions, since the purpose of them is generally to undermine the stability and direction of Friend Computer, is treason.

Successfully serving Friend Computer, AND surviving the mission, will often raise your status up a grade and get you an additional clone but that is not the purpose of Paranoia. Moreso than any other game of which I know, with the possible exception of Toon, having laugh out loud fun during the game is the point. Do not play this game if you want to develop an intricate backstory for your character and have them surmount numerous challenges, growing their legend along the way. That won't happen in Paranoia. You will die, laughing.