Hey guys, and welcome to episode 160 of Maple to Maple. Today I brought back Adam from Tabletop Vibes and we're going to talk about cooperative board games. So I want to ask you a question, Adam, hit me. Have you ever survived a group meeting, whether it's virtually on Zoom or something, or you were in a on a board meeting or something in a conference room? Yes, I have most definitely. Well, then you already understand cooperative.
Board games, that is a good. That is a very good parallel for sure. It's it's so true. Everyone has an opinion. The agenda is usually ambitious. The clock is unforgiving. Oh. My gosh. And somehow a decision has to be made today, right? Yeah. But we need, but we need, we need to have a meeting about that decision before. We, and that agenda that we started with, isn't what we end up with at all. Exactly. So in this episode, we are going
to talk about cooperation. We're going to talk about forming coalitions, negotiating priorities, delegating responsibility, and quietly hoping someone else takes the blame if it all goes sideways. Cooperative board games turn the table into a friendly committee. Or at least they should. But can we all work together well enough to actually win? So it's it's US against the board. How cool is that, Adam? Adam, thanks for joining me on
this one. I'm really excited to talk with you about cooperation and cooperative. Board games, yeah, thanks for having me. I'm super stoked. And then I guess it's fun for me because I have, I feel like I've just recently became more of a cooperative player, right in real life and in board game. It's it's so true because you were just last year, you were like cooperative board games today. Yeah, I don't do that. I don't play cooperatively.
My slogan for this was used to be I'd rather lose than share victory. I feel like I've done a lot of inside work and I'm doing way better at this now. I think about, I think I, it's, it's hard not to think about the world around us, right, right. And and everything that's going on and it's so divisive so. Constantly so divisive. Yeah, rather than focusing on the negative and focusing on the hate, there's enough hate out there and I don't need to throw
more out there. I think cooperative board games, which by the way, has a rich history. I was stunned. I mean I was stunned to find out some of the 1st and oldest cooperative board games. Yeah, hit me with some history. Let's hear it. No, I've got it for you. So here, here's a cool thing. And guys, I got, I got my notes in front of me, so I was prepared sorta. OK, so I want to tell you about OK, now I, I for, for those of you listening, we will do a top five. We have chosen our top five
cooperative board games. And the other reason, let me tell you the other reason why we're doing this. I've got some colleagues at work who are not modern gamers like you and I and the community, but they've, you know, they've got their family and I introduced them to this very concept. And they were like, wait, so no one, no one wins. Like we go to. I'm like, yeah, it's US against the board, Right, Right. You know this, You have kids.
You want your children to learn how to work together, right? As a team with their siblings, right? Yep. So these are great failure. Yes, Oh my God, that's. A good winning, yeah, that you can't just get everything and it doesn't always work out the way we want it to. Yep, Yep, these are all skills that you need to achieve victory in a cooperative board game. Right and real life. And and real life. So Speaking of real life, the very first cooperative board
game. Now, I think part of the reason why I had to dig through this one. This is really obscure. It was invented in 19 O3. Wow, right. Yeah, it was. It was designed by Elizabeth Maggie. And the name of the game was called The Landlord's Game. Yeah. Now it's really cool. It is clearly. I mean, I mean, I, I could probably do an entire episode just talk about the history of this game. It's so cool. That is cool. It's just. Yeah. It's. It's all about what is it not Georgian George's.
It's this whole capitalism and everything. It is clearly a precursor to Monopoly. It is totally a precursor to Monopoly. I feel like I'm rather. Still landlords than a monopoly. Well, OK, so here's the thing. The other reason why no one knows this is it's not a truly cooperative game, but it had a cooperative variant. So it's kind of the first to introduce this concept. The whole point, it's 19 O3. She's on the East Coast of the United States.
I want to say Delaware. I thought I had that written down and now I can't find it. But anyway, so she wanted to prove that the rise in land ownership, right, would impoverish the tenants who were renting the spaces in the city, in the cities of the Northeast and up and down the East Coast, right? Because this is 19 O 3. So you're seeing a huge urban boom in the US And she's like, this is a bad thing. She made a board game and there
what? But there was this cooperative variant that would allow you to have what they were called prosperity rules, where it was US against the board and the board played the role of the landlord. And so you had to try to work together and share the wealth. Right. Takedown capitalism. Yeah, right. Whereas Monopoly is all about we're capitalists, it's the reversal, right? We're trying to grab all the property. Yeah. But I just thought this was
really interesting. But not a lot happens, right? From from 19 O3, you see very, very little, right. Like this. This concept of designing board games, specifically fostering cooperation amongst players, it really doesn't become, I don't even know if it becomes prominent, but in the 60s and 70s you start to see this rise in a couple of games. So there are claims, unfortunately, Gary Gygax is no longer with us to say definitively one way or the other.
But Dungeons and Dragons, there's, there's so many sources that claim that Dungeons and Dragons was designed to foster cooperation. I. Mean, for the most part, you do. I think that Dungeons and Dragons does foster cooperation. I don't know that the designer was specifically thinking that I'm, you know, maybe he was, Who knows? But but D&D is often cited by multiple sources. Yeah. Right. And this is kind of a one person playing party. You know. You are in a party there. Exactly.
You've got you've got to work together to achieve an ambitious goal. Slay the monster, right? Right. Day alive, right 100%. Although nowadays when we get into these meetings, our ambitious, our ambitious goals are, you know, make this much money or build the skyscraper or acquire this hospital or yeah, boy, well, we've come along, haven't we? Yeah, for. Sure. But yeah, so it's really interesting.
And so you see a few things. And then the 80's, the 80s is when you start to get a couple of other games, just a few. So Arkham Horror, right? Yeah. I think a lot of the reason why I think the the you see a lot of Lovecraft because like the 80s is when the literature, the literature of HP Lovecraft fell into public domain. Now this falls into kind of kind of my job outside of the podcast, right, As an Arkhamist copyright law. We talked about that with Ty last week a little bit.
Public domain's a really big one, being able to use sources that have reached a certain that they're old enough now that they're free so you don't have to pay for the IP. And Arkham Horror is US against the board. And it worked really well. Sherlock Holmes consulting Detective. Yeah, in fact, I think.
Nope. I have Sherlock Holmes Murder on the Oran Express. For those of you who are watching it, this is this was given to me by a friend whose mother or grandmother had passed away, and she found that copy. We've not played it because it's so old. I don't want it to fall apart. But it's another another cooperative game. And then Reiner Kinetia in 2000 came out with the cooperative board game Lord of the Rings. So there's not a lot of titles to rely upon in this.
So this genre is really young, right? In 2000, it really starts by the 2000s. It really just kind of explodes, right? So that's kind of right. Like, how many do I have on my shelf? I mean, we're going to do our top five, but right, I think you, you and I, I think we must have covered at least 30 topics, 30 different titles. Yeah, you were. PJ is like give me 5. And I just like pinging him like text message twice. What about this one, This one, this one, He's like 5.
I'm like, I'm so sorry. Yes, yes, my brain. Just like. Going crazy. No, it's totally true. I, I also, let's get back to DED for a moment because it's not a single game, right? Right. It's it, it gave rise to campaign games because you and I talked about this as well. I think one of our top five is a campaign game.
Yeah. Because I kind of think of while campaign games are cooperative, I don't I don't think of them as when I think of cooperative board games, I think of a game where we're all working together, but we're going to hit the table, we're going to play and we're done, right? Right. It's a win or lose. Yeah, Together. We're not together. Campaign games are, you know, they're going to be long.
We're going to, we're going to play and then we're going to play next week and the week after or the next day or whatever. And I wanted to kind of restrict that because I feel like that's a separate genre. Yeah, it's a whole nother episode you can do exactly. So stay tuned next week now. Yeah, campaign games. Yeah, well, you know Adam, Adam, you and I learned from last year. We, you and I don't do back-to-back episodes. No. No one wants to see our faces that many times.
Or mine it maybe. Maybe it's me. I'm going to put it on me. All I know is for those of you listening, last year Adam and I did a look back at 24, then we did a look ahead to 25 and y'all were not able to look ahead. Yeah, nobody watched. We got more hits on our looking back than looking forward. And no one wanted to look forward with me in their in their. So, so you only get at him for one week and we'll, we'll move on. Right. Yes, so, so thank you for letting me take you on that
journey. A brief history of cooperative board games. There's a little bit more to say about the modern, the modern era and you know, we'll talk about them like we, because we have to talk about Matt Leacock. He is. He's like the guy. Right. Yep. And I guess we should probably just talk about him now, right?
Go for it, yeah. Yeah, so in the early thousands is really when you start seeing game designers tackling cooperative board games with the intention of nurturing cooperation, that the board or the table is your enemy. And Matt Leacock was one of The Pioneers. I mean, yes, Reiner Kanitia came out with the Lord of the Rings cooperative game, but I think it's safe to say most people look to Matt Leacock, and he's got a lot of titles. Right, Right. Man, I'm not even going to try
to list them. Well, I probably should. Try. I mean, there's tons of them. He does, but his biggest, probably his most defining game, Adam, you know what it is. Tell the people. He's doing the drum roll. This is all you. It's pandemic. Yep, it's pandemic. See. That's the people. Either you love it or you don't. But. He. Did. Clearly the most definitive cooperative board game out
there, right? Whenever you say you want to play a cooperative game, you usually go are we playing Pandemic or are we playing Betrayal? Yeah, Or any of other Matt Leacock's games, because he's got the Forbidden series. Yes, right. Forbid Forbidden Island, Desert, Forbidden. Forbidden. That was one of my first games like I was given in like the tin was Forbidden Island. Yep. Yes, yeah. Yep. And I think we played the living daylights out of it until I was like, I don't need anybody's
help anymore. I can get us there. Which is why, OK, so it's funny that you bring that up. I love that you bring that up because I even did a little bit of research on this too. One of the things that Matt Leacock was trying to overcome, and not just him but designers, is one of the design flaws in cooperative games is table captaining. Yeah, or. Quarterbacking. Yeah, Yep. Or quarterbacking. What did it?
So for those of you who don't know, table captaining or quarterbacking is when you go to play a cooperative game at a table and Adam tells you what to do for your entire turn. DJ goes because DJ has to take a turn, and I'm like, here's what you're going to want to do on your turn because we're going to win. You're going to do this, and then you're going to do this, this, this and this. And then you're like, why am I here, right?
Yeah, it's it's unfortunate because either you have new players who aren't certain or you have experienced players who are. I don't know if it's self-confidence or if it's an introvertedness right, but have trouble asserting themselves in a group. Yeah, right. I mean, it's intimidating, right? Yeah, it can be. I mean, like, right. Because you're in a cooperative game trying to want to win. No one wants to be the guy that
get making us all lose, right? I mean, I'm exactly at this point, usually I champion it. I'm like, let's go. We're running into that building. Yeah, like don't do it. We're going to lose. I'm like, here we go. But I like to what I like to do, and I've been guilty of table captaining as well as well, OK. It's, it's very easy to do though. It is. There's a fine line between help and quarterbacking, and it's. Yeah, Oh, man. Yeah. So what I do is I just say,
Adam, it's your turn. And I wait for you to ask questions and then I try to read your neuro linguistical cues. Right, nice. Just get up all in there. Are you? For those of you who don't know, that's body language, right? I like, do you see? Patterns. I can't figure it out. Do I look like I got this? Yeah, 'cause scared. What I used to, what I used to do, and this is kind of a form of table captaining as well as Adam. You could take this action and then this.
It would result in this or you could take this action in a result. The options guy. Yeah, but what's really But the the reality is, is that there are more options. I've just cut out all the unnecessary ones. So now I will let you open the door to the Dragon's lair or walk, walk into the city 'cause we're talking about pandemic. Walk into the city with disease cubes and. Everywhere. Whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So. Yeah, take your disease ridden self and fly to the next country and mess up that. But that is contingent upon the individual player, right? So like, I have to be self aware enough that I have this personality flaw and then I'm going to intentionally rein myself in and allow you to play this game right? Right. There are recent cooperative games that have address that. I think some of them are going to be on our list and avoid that table captaining.
I do want to say that Chrono friends by space mold, these guys, these guys, this game I I got to I and I talked about it at Gen. Con. I got to play test it and it was really cool. I couldn't get the scheduling to get them on the show. They've are they're Kickstarters already. They already launched, they did fully fund. That's. Good. They might have a late pledge later this year and I'll get
them on the show. It's a this is a really cool game, guys, but I was just really impressed by there was no table captaining. Like I really couldn't table captain because there's there's just enough things going on and my character, my character's ability. A lot of times we see asymmetry in in games where it's like, well, I do this one thing or you do this one thing, but when when this. So it's a lot of subjective or subjunctives. If this, then I get to do this.
If that, then I get to do this. So I had to really watch what I was doing. Right. And I it makes you to have the greater good. Yes. As a whole. And I was floored. I guess This is amazing. It was an amazing experience because I hate it when Adam tells me. I'm excited to play about it. You should. It's really, it's really a great game. So if there's a late pledge coming out, it's Chrono Friends Chrono.
Friends. Yeah, it's this whole, yeah, you're on a, you're on, I want to say you're on a space station. You're not on a spaceship, but you're it's you're in a temporal causality loop and you're, so you could, you could go backwards in time and time itself is a resource. It's it's wildly, wildly crazy, but we're working together to fight the chrono fiends. But I was just, that was a really cool experience. Right. And that's what cooperative
place should be, yes, eliciting. That's what you should be walking away with. It was a great experience to all of us. Come together, play this game and leave with That was a blast, right? That is. The goal, it is the goal, and it's why I love cooperative games, because I love, I mean, how many times have I said this on the podcast? I love people and I love the relationships that I've
developed. Obviously I'm working to nurture a community of gamers, publishers, designers, but I don't want to play a game and then boss you around and tell you what to do the whole time because that can't be fun for you. Now that's fun for Adam. Could be sometimes, depends on who it is. I have been guilty of doing that, but nevertheless, game sometimes. Yeah, I've been. I think that now you do yeah. I mean, like, I think for me, it's been working on the fact of like, right?
Like we were already talking about, I'm trying to cultivate like people wanting to want to play board games, right? If I love this hobby and I want people to enjoy the hobby that I love, then I can't be the guy being like, you're going to want to do this. I will say that people, if you ask me questions, I will give you that's not optimal. You don't want to do that. You probably want to play this way, but it's your choice. Make the choice.
There's too many choices. I'm like, well, that's just pick one. There's no real wrong answer. We will die on this one. That's a real wrong answer.
You can still choose it. And I think it's been more of like, instead of like making sure everyone's playing the game correctly, It's now more of I want everybody to have a great experience and time together with like crazy moments where like, Oh my gosh, we're trying to, all you got to do is not roll A9, they roll A9. The whole table erupts and we have, that was the epic moment, right? It's like, I think that's where my shift has been for me. But that's a that's a good place to be.
Yeah, I think, I think so. I have moments where I'm like, no, what you doing? You're not doing it. Yeah. Plus, how often do we get to see each other, right? We go to these conventions. I mean, granted, it's not going to be many for me this year. Yeah, that's sad. Well, that's a whole nother thing. Yeah, that's a sad. Thing right, we were talking about how you and I won't see each other until origins and then that's the end of my convention season and we. Had a whole thing planned.
We did, we did. We had a whole thing. Yeah, and a whole cooperative gaming thing, joint trip thing. It was so good. It was so good. So the reality is I don't want to boss you around if this is my only time to see you for the year. I want to have fun with you and I want to play games with you. So. So naturally cooperative games are great, but you want to avoid that table captaining and games are getting better or punch you in the arm because you because.
I instigate things. I think sometimes. The sometimes the tabletop vibes are not always the best vibes. No, they're not. And that's why I love this dude. Oh. Man, so let's dive into our top five cooperatives. So I mean, I don't know, is this really our top five or is it just our five? This is like these are like recommendations. Yeah, I would feel that this is more of like games, cooperative games that we really enjoy. Yeah. Yeah. Like that, I don't know if they're. That if I'm going.
To go if they're my top five, yeah. Yeah, they're not like, I wouldn't say top fives. They're not like these are games that if I was going to pick a cooperative game, here's what I would tell people. Like which game of these five would you want to play? And I would want to want to play those games. OK, that I think that's a better, that is a better description because we went back and forth on this. But I will be honest, these aren't my top fives.
There are other cooperative board games out there that I absolutely love, and then there's campaign games too, so. Which is a whole nother episode. Which we've already said about that. So, you know, for those of you who are looking to play games cooperatively with your family in the future and you're interested, stay tuned. Who knows when, I haven't scheduled it, but there'll be an episode on campaign games and maybe if y'all are good enough and kind enough, we'll have Adam back.
If you want me to be, you might not, might not, That's fine. But you know what? It's been a year. So it's been a year since you're gone? You were distancing yourself so you can bring me back in. I love it. That's good, man. So yeah, why don't you start us off with yeah, start us off with number. 5 #5 I guess this one would be let's go with terror escape. Let's do it, yeah. So terror escape is a cooperative 3 verse one survivalists and a murderer and a big mansion that sits in front
of you. The murderer sits on one side, other people, everybody else sits on the other side. And it's kind of like, I'm going to probably get grilled to the cold for this, but it's it's literally battleship meets betrayal meets a deduction game like and it kind of just smushes it all together and makes this epic game. But I personally like this better than betrayal. I feel like it's the level up version of betrayal and hustle.
Yes, absolutely, totally. Agree, a ton of fun and I think what makes it a ton of fun besides you're trying to sit like actually there's a reel that we have about, I think it's on PJS Instagram. It's not on my Instagram. We played with Nashville board game guy Steven.
And the fun part is right. So all this, the survivalists on one side and we're trying to communicate with each other what we're all going to do and what we think we're going to do without saying what we're going to do because the murderer is listening. So we're literally like looking to sing to each other and we're doing like hand motions on the board trying not to like it's, it's hilarious.
And you would think that this doesn't work and you're laughing because you don't know what PJ is doing with his fingers or which version, what he's trying to convey to you. Who's taking what weapon. Try not to make noise. And then like it's this whole cat and mouse dance thing but like having the other person be the murderer and like try to like battleship. Like are you in B3? Right. So let's talk about, let's talk about that, that battleship comparison just for a second,
right. For, for, for those who are not familiar with Terror Escape. Yeah. So, you know, in battleship, you know, you've got your two boards that are vertical and then you're horizontal.
Well, the game, the game board, there's a map of the mansion in front of the three survivalists, and there's the exact same map of the mansion on the other side for the 4th player who's playing the murderer, the monster, the killer, what whatever the opponent is. And then like you said, there's this tall 3 dimensional vertical model of a mansion that is it's might be, this is probably, this game is probably in my top five in terms of most beautiful games on the table, right?
Like giving you an experience, it's up there. It really is. And of course people have three 3D printed to make that mansion look cooler and whatnot. There's a dice tower built into the mansion. So you roll the dice and it just falls out into the tray there. So the reality is, so we have the survive, we we, I'm assuming the role of the survivalist. Yeah, you did great when we played, by the way. To be fair, I've only played this twice. Once was with you and Steven and and Daniel. Right.
And then I played it in England. Nice. Yeah. But I was, again, I was a survivalist. So. Hard to be the murderer. So yeah, so the idea is we're doing all this non verbal communication. So if you're the one, you know, all you see is like shoulder movements and yeah. Everyone's just. You know, so it's just obscene. And then we the survivalist start laughing at each other because we're thinking how
absurd we look. Right, 100% And then like the funny part too is because you're like in this mansion that's haunted by a murder killer, we all literally start talking like and we're like whispering like, I mean like you don't even need to. We're sitting next to each other. But like you all of a sudden you start getting in this like he's going to hear us, but she will. But then we're not actually in danger.
But we feel like we should be quite like, it's it like just gives us a listen feeling where you're like, the tension just mounts. So at the so I think why don't you talk about the end of each round? This is why we're communicating non verbally, right? Yes. At the end of every round you check for noise and what you're trying to you're trying to do is
escape the mansion. You have to find keys and unlock the door or you can phone, build the radio and phone out to the cops and they have to wait for them to get there and survive till they get there. So then they can come in and save your life. And so you're try at the end of every round, you're checking for noise that you made by opening a door, like rummaging through some storage thing to find some item or you got a key and you tried it and now he's and you
like made noise, right? And so you tell the other person, I made noise in B3, and in B1, sometimes you make noise on purpose to draw that person away from where you're trying to go. And then you pass your turn over to the killer murderer. And then that person's trying to figure out where they think you're at on their side of the battleship terror board. And then they do their things like, OK, they go. Should they go and investigate B3 where there was noise? Or are you just lying?
I have been the worst killer person though. I'm not good at it. Either I don't pay attention enough or I'm just easily swayed by people making fake noise moves. But I am awful. Awful. I think that's the hardest role to play. It is. I have not seen a not seen the one the killer win win. But again, I've only heard it twice. I've only played it twice. Yeah. So. So that's Terror Escape. Right. If you can check that out.
Ice makes games. Yeah. The, the beauty is if you're wanting to play it with your family and of course this one's a little bit more adult. It's a little bit there's. Yeah. And and not just subject matter, which of course subject matter. Right. But also, the strategy requires a level. It's like you're not going to play this with your 6 or 10 year olds, but you could play it with
your preteens or teenagers. Yeah, yeah, they'll, they'll totally get it. But it also allows you like, like, you're not always forcing them to work together like that. That could become monotonous. So this is a game where at least one person gets to be the bad guy. Well, and even in the cooperative feeling, you can still go do you, it just might, you just might die. Like like, like like here kids, we're going to talk about consequences, right? And so like, right, everybody's
like, we should go this way. You're like, yeah, screw you, I'm going to go this direction. And then next turn that person finds you, takes you down to and because like you put like health meters on and then they're looking at you like bad choice. So yeah, teaches a lot of things. So that's terror escape. Tear Escape by Ice makes games. There you go, you want to do. You want to do our next one? Yeah, number #4 we're going to go in a completely different direction. Yeah, 100%.
Let's see, you need time. You see how long it takes to tell, to explain this game to you. And it's just one. This is a fully. Yeah, this is a fully cooperative game in which you have. Let me see. I think it's three to seven, so it's a minimum of three, but seven players played it yesterday at 5. You draw, you have a deck of, you have a deck of cards and you draw 13 cards and then everyone has a dry erase easel in front of them and a dry erase marker and we take turns.
One person is the guesser. Mind you, this is fully cooperative. So I draw the card and there are 5 words numbered one through 5 and I place it so I can't see the words on the card, but you all can. So what do you do? You can write because remember, the name of the game is just one. First of all, the word you're trying to, and I'm going to say 2. So that number, that that word, it's one word. You have to get me to guess based on you writing with your dry erase marker.
One word on your easel. OK, so I close my eyes and I wait. Yeah. And you all you all right? Once all the players have locked in their one word, they reveal them to each other. If there are any duplicates, those get erased. Cancelled. Yes. And then whatever's left over, you reveal to the gasser, and the gasser can look at those clues each and put them all together and try to guess what's happening.
Man, so like if you guys do too much similar things, you can leave the guesser with barely any options to figure out what it is. That's yes. I I am happy to state that yesterday at five players, we won all 13. That's awesome. And there was no duplication. Wow, that's crazy. It's all about when you're thinking about the word you want to write on your dry erase is do I? Do I need to be clever or can I put the obvious right? Is PJ going to think the same thing as me and write it because
it's basic? Or should I make it harder? Or maybe he's thinking something harder so I should make it basic? Right. Exactly, exactly. Because OK, so yesterday one of the clues was Fireman, right? And so the there are four of us trying to write and then it'll tell you what you can and cannot write, you know, So I think someone wrote Carrie, someone wrote Ladder, one of the one of the clues I'm trying to
remember. But the clue that I wrote because you could write onomatopoeias, which are words that are sounds, I wrote we. That's awesome. And so putting the clues together, the other player guessed Fireman properly so. Right. I mean, that's it. It's it's a lot of fun, but you have to have a minimum of three players. There's a two player variant. It's interesting. It's not very. Good. I would. Well, it's not really made. I don't feel like that game is made for two.
No, no. I feel like the more people you have, the more guessing and trying to figure stuff out becomes more fun because there's so much. Yep, put it accommodates a group of seven, so you can have a larger group. It's cooperative, so we all win. It's basically. And The thing is, is you can keep going if you want to, just more cards than you can, but you want to see if you can get 13 without duplicating.
I will say that when I played this game in the UKI think we played like 12 players sitting around a table at the bar at the hotel. Yeah. Now, we didn't all have dry erase, so we used our cell phones, you know, and we would draw the word and hold it up. There was a lot of duplication. I can see that happening for sure. So it's it's just one by repos productions. Oh. Repo makes it. That's. Awesome. Yeah, repo repo productions 8 plus is the age according to the game.
Got to be able to write. To 7? Yep. Three to three to seven. Yeah, yeah, totally fun. It is not mature, you know what I mean? Like it's. Like my family would like this game so I should probably check this out. You definitely should check this out, I think. Totally. It would have a lot of fun with it too. Yeah, I mean, I have a really big family too. So like gatherings and stuff, everybody likes cooperative games are usually the way to go some of the time.
So that's that's great. Yeah, the other thing too. All of our season gamers, right when we get together at gaming conventions, because we haven't seen each other in forever, we end up with like 6 or seven of us at a table and at least we can. Well, OK, that's true. That's because you're popular. You're so popular. That's every Everybody knows Adam.
And then like all of a sudden our table of eight goes to the table of 17. And then like, or it's just people we've seen before and like, yes, everyone just sits down. Next thing you know, we're like, it's like the Last Supper. Yeah, Yep. But anyway, this is a game that can accommodate, and it's perfect for conventions because heck, you know, it's easy to play. And it's not isn't the box not that big either, right? No, it's not big at all, right?
Absolutely not. So you could easily, yeah, maybe travel. So I mean, you could fit in your travel bag, you could fit in a backpack easily for sure. If you wanted to, let's say you wanted to play it at work with a couple of colleagues, you could do that and maybe just draw 6 cards instead of the 13 because of time constraint. Yeah, you could, you could do that. Like there's that freedom. But it's definitely worth it. It's definitely family friendly. It's a ton of fun, lot of
laughs. It's totally worth it. So how about number? 3 #3 All right, I'm going to go with this one. So this is this one for me is kind of just like kind of crazy because it kind of came out of left field and there's decent hype around it, but I actually didn't care about the hype aspect. So it's called there and back again.
It is a rolling right and like so just like cooperative games that I wasn't really big on rolling rights was like I would never even think about playing a rolling right. I'm like, if I wanted to write like school work, I would go do that, but I don't want to do that. So I play board games and people like there's rolling, right. So I'm like now, but I was sent this game to to cover, which I was really appreciated by office dog. I love Lord of the Rings and I have a friend, Tara.
You might have she's been on here I think a couple times. You might have seen her Tara's Ballot Club. Yep, she was here talking about study. Yes, she's on here for study. She taught us how to play study. Study was great. That was on our episode for 2025. But yeah, this game is just like I started playing it and I just started realizing because I guess if you're not a Lord of the Rings fan, it doesn't really
matter. But if you are, it's just really fun to like kind of like get to walk through Lord of the Rings through rolling right form. And it's just a really chill experience to play. So like, you have 12 chapters. I think maybe 10 could be wrong. I haven't gotten that far yet.
So we don't know. But you have a different chapters and they go up in complexity, which I think is just absolutely brilliant because you start off learning the game at Chapter 1, you open Chapter 2 and you're like this nuts, where did we just go? This was so. And it like adds a little bit more and Chapter 3 adds a little bit more. And then it keeps giving you harder and harder puzzles to figure out. And so we're at, we're currently, I think, at chapter 4 and it's a blast. I'm like it.
I'm actually genuinely excited to go like read the story and to try to figure it out. Also, I've lost by like one point against Tara every single time. Frustrating. Can't seem to win. There's always some line I did the wrong direction right? Not optimal but it just makes me keep wanting to come back and play it again. Someone say it makes me want to come there and back. Nice, nice. I had you Nice. But. It's. Great. Yeah. It's really cool.
It's it's one I have not played. I haven't got a copy of it yet. So you know, office Dog, if you guys are listening, y'all want to send me a copy and let me play it and I'll have you on the show? Yeah, You know, we would love to have you. Everyone keeps talking about it and I feel like it's a game I need to experience.
It is good. Well, and the cool part is that I think that is wins me over even more is we could be playing like right now doing this exact same thing and we could stream it. We can play off our phone. You open your copy, I open my copy and like what Tara and I've been doing is like, she rolls the dice one turn she tells me what it is. I set the dice face in front of me. The next turn, I roll the dice, tell her what it is. She sets in front of us. We draft those dice and take our actions.
And like, even if we had four of us, because it plays four, we could all be on a video call in different parts of the world and still play together. That's something I really enjoy about rolling rights in general. And if you haven't figured it out already, because I know there's some new, new to the hobby listeners, roll it right, meaning you roll dice and then
you write something right. You might hear us talk about flipping right or you may even hear us talk about X and right because there's flipping right, there's there's the rolling right. There's a lot of different mechanics where you do a thing and then you write something. So you may hear that. But what I like about rolling rights is that we could do that right is that we could play. I've played a lot of rolling right games virtually like you were explaining with our friends.
So cool across the pond. I love it. I love it. I'm jealous, though. I am jealous. Like you get to, you get to play a game with Tara. We should get you on because also Cosmic Bend just got it so the four of us could be traversing through through Lord of the Ring. Office dog, you got to get on it, man. You got to give me a copy of this game.
Expensive of a game from what it is it's actually I think it's like literally a 30 to $40 game, which that is maybe expensive but for a four player game that you can literally replay because you can just wipe off the dry erase stuff OK and there's variations that you can make it harder OK and things like that I love it it's just really pretty it's really pretty yeah, that's mine I. Don't. I don't want to make you guys go back. As you said, you're on chapter 4.
I don't want to make. You good. I have. I have all the reasons to try to beat Tara from losing. So the first game I lost by 40. I have no idea how that was possible. I thought I was doing great. I was so excited to share my number. And then I was like, I made 40 points. She's like, I made 75 and I was like. Of course. Wait, what? The next game I was like, that does it, I'm going to focus in still lost by 1. So now I'm incentivized to go back and win in a cooperative
man. In a cooperative man. Yeah, you know. This, this slight competitive streak, Yeah, It'll never go away for you, No. No, even in a cooperative game, I'm like, dude, I rolled way better than you rolled last time. Actually, that's not true with dice. Everybody knows if you watch any of my YouTube videos, I can't roll dice. That's just my bane of my existence. Yeah, that is Yep, Yep,
absolutely. I can have 1000 dice and I will still lose whatever roll that needs to be at like it's just crazy and like the people like all you need to do is roll, not this. There's five other sides of the dice that we can we can work with, and you're like. And that's what you're going to roll. Yeah. Oh yeah. So how about #2 You ready for number 2? Yeah, hit me up. So #2 is Sky team. Yeah. Yeah. This was a huge, huge game back. Like what is it 2-3 years ago?
It won the Spiel, the Yards last year and it's the first, It's the first two player game to win that award. Right. Again, I mean, everybody was talking about it, everyone's playing it. Yes, yeah, two player cooperative game, a design by Luke Remit I think, I'm pretty sure he's French. The idea is that you're a pilot and copilot of a commercial airliner and you are at 6000 feet and you are on approach to runway. That is the set up.
OK, now you have the, the pilot has four dice, the copilot has four dice and there are two phases. The first phase is the planning phase where we can talk about, OK, so we need to do this, we need to flap so the, you know, the altitude or the, you know, the pitch and the Yaw. And you got to watch out for this and the complexity just it gets more and more complex, but we're working together.
Here's the catch. And I know this is not very thematic or realistic, but I don't know how this game works without we get to the second phase. We, we roll our dice, an intern order pilot, copilot or copilot pilot depending upon the round because like I said, it's 6000 feet. So basically each round you drop 1000 feet. That's going to happen no matter what. So you're going to play 6 rounds. Once you roll your dice, you and your partner are not allowed to speak to each other at all.
I think it's a real fun part of the game though. It is. No, it totally is. We learned with my wife and I, we've been playing for a while. I am always the copilot. Don't put me in charge, which I guess is pretty realistic considering she's my boss in real life as well. So I guess that works. But the reality is, so when you place your dice out, there's certain rules, there's certain placements and depending upon whether you're the pilot or the copilot.
So for the pilot, you have to lower the landing gear. Well, there's only three front, left and right and the number on the die doesn't matter. But if you're the copilot, you're adjusting the flaps and they have to be done in order. So the first one, the dice result has to be a one or two. So you have to do that one first.
The second one is a 2 and 3, three and four, five and right, you get it. But so those are a little bit, and then there's brakes and you know, and then of course, as the game progresses, there's even more complex rules for dice placement. Sometimes you have to adjust for. When the game is dice, I'm out. It's it's. My plane's crashing. Well, but it's not what you think. It's not, it's not going to be the same thing.
But the plane does often crash. Well, the other thing too is like you have, you have airplanes in front, you have air traffic in front of you. So you have to put a die out to contact the radio tower to say, hey, get this plane out of my way, I'm coming in for an approach, right? But we're doing all this while not saying a word. This is like a good moment where they built this to be like
couples, non couples. We're going to, we're going to see how you guys can communicate without communicating. See if you really know. Let's see. Well, that's what's crazy awesome about cooperative games. You're teaching failure and success. You're teaching cooperative play. You're teaching working together to achieve a goal. You're working together to sometimes you don't achieve that goal. Sometimes Bob times you need to be able to communicate while you're with each other without
communicating. Sometimes the murderer or killer or other people are listening in and you need to zone in, right? I mean, it's like so many life. Skills. It's so true. It is so true. And it's, it's, I think the reality is the fact that you can't speak. And This is why the game doesn't work otherwise, because like, I can't, once I roll the dice, I can't be like, OK, I've got a four, where should I put it? You can't do it. You just you just have to put it
out on the board. And you, they have to trust that you're going to try to make the best choice of the action and you're going to trust them to make the best choice. So it builds the, IT builds the tension, right, of what it must be like in the cockpit of a commercial airliner when you're working together. I wouldn't do it. But not speaking to each other. Yeah. Yeah. Because I know if I'm a copilot.
Yeah, I'm not. You know, I'd be like, hey, you're in charge, pilot, but I'm not going to talk to you. Hands off. Yeah, Yeah. No, it's cool. That's cool. Yeah, but it's it's a fantastic game. There's an it's, it's very small. It's it's widely available anywhere board games are sold. I don't even. I think you can find it in Walmart and Target now. Amazon. Yep, you can find it on Amazon. It's it's relatively, relatively a lot of fun. Again, it's it's two player
only. You cannot play it solo because that defeats the purpose and there are no more players. So it's it's worth checking out. It's one of my favorites. I love it when it hits the table. We have not yet gotten to the expansion because I think we have three more runway approaches to complete before we can move on to the expansion, which is adds more and it adds turbulence. Oh, that's got to be fun and crazy without talking, just blowing you around everywhere.
I. Had no idea how that works. That's going to. Be cool. That's it. Yeah. So that is number 2, which brings us to our last one, number one cooperative game. And this is our campaign game, right? Because we we promised we were going to. Yeah, it's a campaign. It's a campaign. It's not a game that it's not a game you play once and you're done because there's there's a story, right? I mean, it's, yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, it's Dark Tower,
which is it's amazing. So like if you're old as us, you there's a they made it back in the day was the night it was 19. 84 I I believe it was 80. I think it was 80. Four. Yeah. And like, they have the Dark Tower. There literally was a tower in the middle of the thing. Barely worked and functioned, but it did.
But it was super. I think it might have been Hasbro. I don't even remember but Super at a school game they remade it restoration games and the tower that sits in front of the table now is crazy. Like if you want a good table experience and just nuts. Like you put in 2D batteries or whatever C batteries and this thing has an app and it rotates, the tower rotates, it drops skulls out of it, pieces come off of it to show different
symbols, it lights up red. It does everything besides pushing out smoke, which I feel like they could have. They could have made it work. They could have it also features it features something that you and I absolutely love yes, and that's a round. Board A circular board. Yes, we love circular boards. For those of you who are new to the channel, if you go back to last year, you'll discover that Adam and I both have an affinity for circular boards.
There has been recently, yeah. I'll literally buy a game because has a circular board. There has been a recent rise in these, yeah. That's a great one of Whispers has a circular board. Seti Seti has a circular board. Yep, our. Tamage for Maggio has a circular board. Arctica has Ivy's. Ivy's game. Which one is a veiled fate? Veiled fate, yeah. Circular board. Huge circular board. Yes and yeah, it's a blast.
But Dark Tower, the so crazy part about Dark Tower was so maybe some people want to agree with me on this, but there's a game called Western Legends. It is. It's pretty fun. I love the theme. I love Western games. We hadn't get it to the table that much. I saw Dark Tower come out.
I played it with Steven, a national board of game guy, and I'm not AI, was not a big cooperative player, and the game drew me in immediately because of the fact that I handle my Kingdom. I am the Lord of my own Kingdom and we're all working together. So essentially what you are is there's a dark tower in the center of the board of the circular board that's beautiful. You have the West, the east N the South kingdoms. Everybody controls the Kingdom.
Everybody's player has an ability and everybody's player ability helps everybody in the entire vast Kingdom, but it also helps you in your sliver of your Kingdom. Then you put out a locations and you put out objectives and you put out goals and then you put out monsters and then you have monsters in your Kingdom in region and someone has monsters in theirs. You have a quest in your stuff, but you have to go to the Kingdom of the east to get whatever it is and go back to the West.
And there's like all this different moving parts. But I think what drew me in was the fact that like, my Kingdom is my Kingdom and I can better it and do whatever I want or leave it and not care. And while you're doing all this stuff, you're dropping skulls into the top of the and it's
other massive tower. And at the end of every round, the bad guys get to go and move and the tower spins and skulls fall out of the tower, little tiny skulls and where they land on whatever Kingdom side they fall on, you put that like damage into your Kingdom. It's mind blowing. If you get too much damage, it starts to build, blow buildings up, but you can't take actions. And then you get glyphs on your side in your Kingdom that don't let you be able to do different
actions. And then now your Kingdom, when someone crosses from their Kingdom into your Kingdom, now they're affected by whatever is happening in your Kingdom. And I just thought that that was like the most like quarterbacking people could be like, we should do this. And I'd be like, well, I would, but my Kingdom needs help, right or not. And it's just, Yep, it's cool, super cool. It's, I think you're right.
The one thing I absolutely just adore about this game is, again, there can't be any table captaining because you've got to do what's best for the entire table. And sometimes that means walking away from your Kingdom and other times it means putting your Kingdom first. So it's just, it's really conditional.
And there are things that trigger where you take these little plastic skulls and you drop them in the top of the tower and they will either fall out if the doors are open on all the four sides, or they'll just store there. And so it builds up the tension because, like you said, it's battery operated, it's app driven, meaning that you have to have an app on a tablet or a phone, and it syncs up via Bluetooth to the tower. It'll rotate. It will light up. Like you talked about the there
are glyphs on the sides. Those glyphs will light up, which will prohibit certain abilities. We're asymmetrical where we each have different powers or abilities. It's just, it's incredible. It's such a good game with a great narrative. Yeah, amazing. The only thing that we don't have is the miniatures for all the monsters. Those are represented by cardboard chips. Everything else we've got, I had to, you know me. I was like, I know you did. I love the I love the table.
If I have this big tower, I have to like have. I didn't paint my minis though so they're just black, but they look awesome. It's OK, they look great. They're super cool, they look great. I, I think this is this is another game that's in my top five most beautiful games on the table. That tower, that tower is amazing. Right. It's, I mean, it's crazy. It's easily a foot tall, Yeah, might have been more than 12
inches. It might be I'm trying to find my. Box and it's over there it's a good 6 to 8 inches in diameter and it just sits Yeah, it's not it's plastic, but it's that dark Crimson Yeah, it looks really cool yeah, it's. Worthy. I guess there's the other thing to say about it is if you don't like app based games, it's probably not for you. That's true. Because it is an entirely app
based game. I don't think it in some app based games, I feel like hinder games or take away the interaction of people and that's like you're going the opposite direction of what the board of games should be. But in this it, it's just a tool to make sure that everybody understands what's available. And you still have to be like, what are we all going to do? What should we do?
This is in my Kingdom and someone gets to hit the button to end the round and everyone's always like because the as you hit end round, the whole thing shifts and moves and like bad things happen, events. And then you can also play on what do they call it, gritty mode. You play in gritty mode. So there's like a normal mode, there's a cooperative mode, there is a race mode, a will. You should try it once, but it is awful. It's anti climatic, it is very bad.
It's it was not made to be It's supposed to be a cooperative game. So we do a race where everyone's racing to get to finish a goal first. We tried it and like it just like the ending was just like, and that was it. We're just all just like we did all of this to lead to that. But it is made as a cooperative game. And so you're literally like the whole point is like it still brings everybody together. But if you don't like app based games.
Then it's not entirely for you, but there you there you have it. That's. But it is. It is a ton of fun. That is five cooperative recommendations from the two of us. So again, we've got run a sewer, A terror escape just one from here and back again. Is that right? That the full title from Here and Back Again, Sky Theme and Return to the Dark Town 5 cooperative games that you can get at any local game store or on Amazon or wherever.
And we don't have any sponsors, so I'm not going to try to promote anyone else. But yeah, check those out. They're anywhere they're worthy. And yeah, buy, buy it, find a copy that a friend's got, whatever it takes. Yeah. And build more cooperation because there's enough hate and device in this right now. So let's let's work as a team. I love that 100%. I love Exactly. Yeah. So, Adam, thank you so much. Thank you. Yeah. Thank. You so much for having me here. It was great.
Are you kidding? Yeah, this is amazing. Tell everyone, especially those who are new to the channel, where they can find you. Yeah, you can find me on Instagram at Tabletop Vibes. You can also find us on YouTube, tabletop vibes and our website tabletopvibes.com and yeah, we we do a lot of cool things and it's we always have a good time. Try to bring good vibes cooperative non cooperative
gaming. Owen writes these days everything, Yeah, we're just excited to be a part of P JS community and get to hang out with him and and talk to you all. Well, thank you. Thank you so much for that. And check out Adam's channel. You guys are in for a treat. And if you want to know anything about any game that's going to be launching on Kickstarter now or soon, he's probably covered it. Be sure to check it out, guys. Don't forget to hit the like and
subscribe button. And here's a question for all of you so you guys can send comments to me. And I genuinely want to know what is your favorite cooperative board game? So send that to me in the comments. And yeah, we will respond. As always, be kind to one another and let's play more games.