Game Orders

I'm sure everyone is on the edge of their seats waiting for me to report on all of those games I ordered a while back. Yes, they all came in, all within about 5 days of placing the order, so great service. A quick note: I don't represent any of these games through IPR, but I might at some point, and I have actually talked to a couple of these publishers about the games. Take what I say with grains of salt to taste. I will go into each one in detail in seperate posts, but here is just a bit about very first impressions:

Breaking the Ice: I got this one first, about two days after I ordered it (Emily must have dropped it in the mail pretty much the same day). The game is a half-size booklet, staple bound, of roughly 30-odd pages. It has a cardstock cover, with color, and some clip-art looking pieces inside. There is also an illustrated pair of players, depicted consistently throughout the book, and on the cover, all by the same artist. This is pretty cool, it visually ties the book together, and lets you put faces to the sample players in the examples. I thought it was very interesting that the artwork featured the players, rather than some hypothetical characters in the game.

Under the Bed: This one blew my mind, just from the basic layout. It is a little booklet, about four inches wide and two inches tall. It runs maybe 20 pages. The rest of the game is a set of cards that are used when you play. These rules are no longer than the ones you find in a typical board game. Awesome! It's all black and white, even the cover, which was glossy cardstock, and there is only clip art inside. Still, this is a really cool looking little game. It really doesn't look like an RPG.

Primetime Adventures: I got this one next, with a note on the envelope letting me know that Bulldogs Rules. :) This game has a half-size format, with a pretty crude perfect bind. I'm not too confident that the binding will last through sustained use, but pretty much all of my game books fall apart, so not really a big deal. This has a two-color cover with an old TV picture tube on it. The art inside is much more typical RPG art, with depictions of characters and scenes from the game. Since this game is about role-playing a fictional TV show, it makes sense to show the various characters.

With Great Power... : The packaging I received this in made me laugh. The game came bagged in a polyurethane comic bag, with a strip of scotch tape holding it closed, just like a graphic novel fished out of a comic store back issue bin. Very cool. That really sets the tone for the game. Interestingly, it doesn't have an awful lot of art in it, considering its a comic-themed game, but what there was was pretty good. There is even a rules example section laid out graphically, like a comic, which was a very nice touch I thought.

Coming later, actual reviews of the content. I haven't been able to play any of these yet, but I hope to get a game in for at least one before the reviews start coming out.