The Non-Euclidian Staircase

First was the Order of the Stick Adventure Game, with Grant (Durkon), Lou (Belkar), Ryan (V), Luc (Haley), and I (Roy), so only one NPC (Elan, in this case). Unfortunately, what happened was just what I had feared from reading the game and online session reports and reviews, which is that the game took too long and was too random for its own good. In the end, we called the game at dinnertime, just after entering level 3, when we realized there was a least 90 minutes of game left and we weren't really interested enough to play thru that. As Roy, I had a significant lead, though Belkar and V were close behind and quite able to catch up (Belkar by ambushing me, V by fireballing rooms full of monsters for extra XP). Not a success, however. Especially since Luc hadn't read the comic, so didn't get most of the jokes.

To "cleanse the palate", as it were, we returned to Trendy, with Ryan leaving after the first hand. This game was a good bit more aggressive than the first play, with lots of use of the "Out!" card to undermine trend attempts. In the end, Luc won a solid victory, with the rest of us clustered many points behind her, 160/137/137/140, with all scores a bit distorted by the 5-player first hand. Still, a fun game.

Lou and Grant then asked to try another short-duration game, and I offered King's Breakfast, a game of claiming cards, but making sure the king has at least as many cards of each sort as you. It takes a bit of getting used to, but we managed to play well enough, in fact ending with none of us out-consuming the King (which, perhaps, meant we weren't sufficiently aggressive). Grant managed a slight win, 101/96/94.

And then we called it a night, with plans to perhaps try another mid-to-long game or two on Saturday.