Monday, January 27, 2025
Familiar Tales
Familiar Tales is a campaign board game that you can buy directly from Plaid Hat Games for $80. Look around with the help of one of those sites searching for the cheapest board game prices, and you can find it for as low as $60. I wanted to start with that information, because in my opinion Familiar Tales is exceptionally good value for money. If you want to play a "family weight" campaign board game, this is pretty much impossible to beat. Yes, I just got a parcel with The Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era from Chip Theory Games in it, and that is probably a better game and has much better components, but I paid nearly $300 for that. So if I complain about things in Familiar Tales in this post, keep the price tag in mind.
We just finished our campaign of Familiar Tales after about 10 sessions. The game has 9 chapters, and one can usually play one chapter in one session, but we had some shorter sessions. Yesterday we played a chapter and a half, because we wanted to finish it. For adult gamers with some experience in role playing and board games, Familiar Tales is possibly a bit too long. And only the final boss fight was even remotely challenging. What kept us playing was the great storytelling, with fantastic characters, all told with great voice acting over the Familiartalesgame.com web app, and that in several languages.
On the gameplay side, Familiar Tales wasn't that great for us. The combat and skill system is simple, and doesn't get any more interesting over the course of the game. Because the game was too easy for us, and because the low price tag limited the number of cards Plaid Hat Games could put in the box, we always bought all the items and all the skill cards long before we reached the end of each era, which made character progression less interesting. So, ultimately I would mostly recommend Familiar Tales as a game to play with kids. As a first campaign board game for children, this is fantastic. For experienced players it doesn't really offer enough, even if the story is great.
I just spent some time sorting all the cards and resetting my copy of Familiar Tales so it could be played again. That felt like a complete waste of time. I don't think I'll ever play it again. But it would feel equally bad to chuck a played board game into the bin. The opportunities to sell used board games in the region I now live in are very limited, especially for games that are in English, and not the local languages.
Labels: Board Games
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Is there somewhere you could donate games you've finished with? I have to say that in this country, where we have countless charity shops filled with all kinds of donated items, I have almost never seen any board games other than the regular, mainstream titles so perhaps it's not as easy as you'd imagine to pass on the more specialist titles but surely there must be some organization who could find a good use for them, either for resale or to give to people who'd be able to play them.
I imagine one could fairly easily set up a long distance sale or swap through the large community on Board Game Geek or similar site. But international shipping costs are gonna be a bear on larger, heavier items without the bulk rates companies can negotiate.
@Gerry Quinn: There are two of them! Skyrim - The Adventure Game, and The Elder Scrolls - Betrayal of the Second Era
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