The Floor is Lava and Bored? Games!

The Floor is Lava and Bored? Games are Ivan Brett’s collections that between them total 201 games. I picked them both up at AireCon – I’d not heard of either of them before. (I was only aware of Ivan Brett as he was a competitor in The Traitors, the Werewolf-inspired 2022 BBC TV series. I didn’t know he’d written books of games.)

Anyway, both books are great and group the games into categories – games for the car, games for the table, party games, games played standing up, and so on. I’m considering them together here, although if you were only getting one, I recommend The Floor is Lava, as it feels like a slightly stronger collection.

Many of the games are familiar – Miss H had played The Floor is Lava at Guides, plus there are games like Wink Murder, Sprouts, Boxes and the like, which I’ve played before.

There are also games that have been turned into “proper” board games – in the same way that Werewolf is essentially Mafia and The Hardest Game in the World is like The Mind. (And, although it’s not relevant here, The Great Dalmuti is a reworked version of President.)

And while many of these games can be found on the Internet (the links above all go to Wikipedia), it’s nice to have an easily portable collection. (I hadn’t realised that Wikipedia was such a great store of such games until I wrote this post.)

Plus, there are loads of games new to me.

Inevitably, in a collection of 201 games, there are plenty that don’t appeal. But that doesn’t matter – there are plenty I would enjoy playing.

RPGs included!

The Floor is Lava even includes RPGs and explains them in five pages with an example of play and five suggested settings. Full marks for brevity, although I’d be surprised if anyone uses The Floor is Lava for their first RPG.

Is this even a game?

Some entries stretch the definition of ‘game’. Memory Palace is a trick for memorising lists. What’s that good dog probably called? is making up names for dogs you meet. Talk like Shakespeare is talking in iambic pentameter. Avagat is a made-up secret language. I guess they’re fun things to do, but I’m not sure I’d count them as games. (But then, I’m not trying to fill a couple of books with over 200 games.)

My favourite games

I’ve not played all of these, but they look like games I would enjoy:

From The Floor is Lava:

• Brian! Brian! A silly counting game – you count in Roman numerals but replace I with “Brian!”, V with “Your friend Ian is here!” and X with “He wants to know if you can come out to play!” And then you sound like an exasperated mother – fun and silly. (I have played this.)
• 1000 Blank White Cards where players create their own rules.
• Hangman Mastermind is a simple word game (and a combination of hangman and the old Mastermind game).

From Bored? Games!

• Mao, a legendary card game played over several rounds where you have to work out what new rule the dealer has added.
• My Card, where players trade and barter over coloured cards – the value of which they have to find out. (Could be used as a mechanic for something in a freeform, I think.) It’s based on a Sid Sackson game from A Gamut of Games, which I’ve added to my birthday list.
• Nuclear Apocalypse is a simple wargame.

Solo roleplaying

I enjoy solo board games but don’t enjoy solo roleplaying games. What’s going on?

(Quick aside. I’m not criticising anyone who enjoys solo RPGs. This is me gazing at my navel and trying to work out why they don’t work for me.)

Saving the world in Thunderbirds

Solo RPGs

I have little experience with solo RPGs, but that’s because I don’t enjoy them. The two I’ve played to any extent are Thousand Year Old Vampire and Starforged. (And even then, I had a guide to Starforged.)

I’m also not a massive fan of the “lonely fun” some games come with. For example, I don’t want to build spaceships or subsectors or star systems in Traveller. And I don’t enjoy creating stat blocks while preparing RPG adventures. (I’m a big fan of Fate Accelerated’s simplified approach to NPC stat blocks.)

(I admire the mechanics of solo RPGs. Both Thousand Year Old Vampire and Starforged seem good at what they do. They just aren’t pressing the right buttons for me.)

Fighting Fantasy gamebooks

What about Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, such as The Warlock of Firetop Mountain and its successors? Well, while I enjoyed The Warlock of Firetop Mountain when it came out, I tired of the later books.

A few years ago, I found some in a charity shop and revisited them, but I found them as frustrating as I remember. I was annoyed at the lack of clues – sometimes, the means to success was finding something completely at random. I also didn’t enjoy the fights – typically, I would ignore them and assume I won.

I also skimmed the text to get to the decisions – the bit l liked.

The only gamebook I honestly enjoyed was Dave Morris & Jamie Thomson’s Can you Brexit? I found this monster of a book (865 paragraphs) both educational and entertaining, and I played it all through (I even managed to reverse Brexit!). Can you Brexit? has an advantage over the fantasy fighting gamebooks – it’s meaningful, which maybe made a difference.

(So does this mean I would like “interactive fiction” more, as the bookish/less-gamey hobby calls itself? Apparently not – I’ve tried a couple and found they have the same problem as gamebooks – I skim them to get to the decisions. I think the problem is me.)

Solo board games

On the other hand, I’ve played many cooperative board games, including The Lord of the Rings, D-Day Dice, Pandemic, Thunderbirds, Space Hulk: Death Angel, Escape: The Curse of the Temple, and Ghost Stories. In addition, I often play competitive games with an “AI” such as Wingspan.

So why do I like solo board games but not solo RPGs or (with rare exceptions) fighting fantasy gamebooks?

Plot and role-playing

In an older post (Why I roleplay), I explained that when I roleplay, I like three things:

• Plot: I like games with a plot and a purpose. I’m not a fan of sandbox games.
• Characters must be important: Characters tied into whatever is going on. Session zero is important.
• Players talking to each other in character: I love it when the players talk to each other as their characters. They need not be speaking as their characters but simply interacting as their character with each other.

The solo RPGs I’ve played seem to be sandboxes. As I recall, Starforged felt like one. We went places, and we explored. And Thousand Year Old Vampire was similar – it was about existing as a vampire rather than being involved in a grand plan. But, on the other hand, a solo board game isn’t a sandbox – there’s a definite problem (storming the beaches on D-Day, saving the village from Chinese ghosts) to solve (and win).

Characters may or may not be important to what’s going on in a solo RPG. As I recall, the characters from Starforged were rolled randomly – they could have been anybody. On the other hand, in Pandemic, your character is someone from the CDC, fighting infectious diseases.

Of course, neither solo RPGs nor boardgames solve the problem of someone to talk to…

I like solo board gaming because I like solving the puzzle and winning, but I find it interesting that they tick more of my roleplaying boxes than solo RPGs do.

But I’ve not explored solo RPGs in depth, so perhaps the game for me is somewhere out there somewhere…

Suspending disbelief

Suspension of disbelief is a weird thing.

After struggling my way through the first third of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, my suspension of disbelief has died.

Not at the zombie nonsense (which is, after all, part of the premise), but in chapter 21, when the Bennet girls encounter a chipmunk and a skunk! In Hertfordshire!

That was the last straw, and I gave up. It’s in the give-to-charity pile.

Writing Writing Freeform Larps

I've now created a separate site for Writing Freeform Larps, and I've moved this post there.

You can read it here.