This is the best video I have seen about this game. I have owned 3 copies over the years, and think my current copy which is unpunched may just go up for sale.
Flip the unpunched MR for a profit and invest the proceeds in the Brown Forman distilled Early Times Bottled-in-Bond. If the BF ET BiB is sold out then buy Old Forester 'Red Label 100 Proof', Amoeba Wars and/or Wizard's Quest. Or Titan.
I had been putting off learning Magic Realm for a very long time. I was born in 77 and around 1985 found a unused Magic Realm box in my grandma's basement with my little brother. It stuck out in the storage shelves due to its art. We took it upstairs, as if we had been in a dungeon ourselves and unearthed an ancient treasure, and asked grandma. She explained that the kids got it (our aunt, uncles, and dad) and none could figure out the rules. I was just a kid but I did setup the tiles and put chits on the tiles and setup the treasures and monsters. After about an hour and a half of reading the rules everytime I was trying to do setup I felt I had done it right. My little brother watched part of this at the start and took off and entertained himself. He came back when I was ready and we played Black Knight and White Knight. We played about three turns before we ended up on tile that summoned bats. These bats killed us. I am sure I didn't understand the combat system but I tried to follow with the rule book and we fatigued and wounded chits and ultimately were both killed. Feeling we didn't understand why we should choose one form of attack over another and why the lineup. This quick merciless end to our heroes after a long setup killed our interest. .... I told myself I would return to really do this right someday. We put away the mint condition Magic Realm and I never saw it again. My grandma moved and we never knew what happened to that played once Magic Realm. Fast forward to 2006. I rediscover Magic Realm... having completely forgot about it.. in 2006. I was so busy at the time though I never was able to try and learn. Fast forward again to 2020 and the Pandemic. I rediscover Magic Realm because I learned Root and was immediately reminded of Magic Realm. If you don't know Root it is an area control war game that is cute and quick but borrows certain mechanics from Magic Realm. Well, here I was... 43 years old... and... with mind and time to learn Magic Realm. I will say this... it took me about two weeks of routine documentation reading before I even attempted to try RealmSpeak. Thankfully Realmspeak made the process easy to try because it has an autosetup. Though you can setup if you want. I like setting up the map manually. That is fun. Realmspeak was there to reach into and keep trying different ideas and read new material and apply it to the game without the setup time. I was still kind of flying blind though as that combat system still had me guessing. Anyways about three weeks in I played a game that was hosted on TTS (Table Top Simulator) by a very experienced player on Board Game Geek forums. That game was truly my first real Magic Realm game... though I had some fun playing Realmspeak it was a kind of half blind... ok... I guess I did it right..process. Once I played with Gex/Serious Gamer from BGG on the Table Top Simulator he was able to fill in the details quickly and distinctly. The game really clicked that day. I was able to reference back to previous games and go "Ah hah.. oh ok... I get it now". Suddenly all the complexity was drained down to some very simple mechanics that just contained a lot of details and exceptions BUT... the game had revealed itself to me and I became quickly in love where as before it felt very clunky and chained to its own minutia. Now... having said that... Magic Realm does still... even when you fully see it clearly... have clunky bits.. BUT... I must say it is my favorite game now. I routinely play in Realmspeak and it is still surprising me. Once you get the mechanics down to the simple processes and they are natural to you,,, they really aren't that complex at all. Its like twenty to thirty modules become compartmentalized into references that still spawn from basic concepts. Moving around. Discovering the world. running into monsters and locations and possible treasure sites. Then when you begin to understand each character it becomes fun to understand each one's relationship to the larger game and strategy and really immersion. What happens is a great narrative forms from these simple things and you sometimes get an epic story or even a funny tragic ending. There are strange circumstances of detail that can happen in Magic Realm that no other game can recreate... not even close. The key... is to play with someone who can help you get going and understand as you go along what and why the world and situations work. Once I got past the combat system with Knights and fighters I began to do the Magic characters. Particlularly the Sorceror or the Magician. These Magic characters really unlock the world. The Sorceror can summon magic on his own quite well. Though enchanting tiles can extend magic chits on many occasions and in some circumstances... enchanting a tile is the only way to use spells that aren't native to your magic type since most magic users have one or two types of native magic. The Magician HAS to enchant the world to be effective. He has chits from each magic type 2 through 6 but not enough to enchant one and cast a spell. He is forced to summon the magic of the world in order to cast his spells. Also to find artifacts and enchant the artifact with magic so that it becomes a source of magic which will allow him to cast certain hard to find spells. Anyways... I will say this. Magic Realm turned out to be quite amazing for me. The last game I was quite confidant and ran my sorceror to the top of the High Pass to kill a Winged Demon and I didn't hide nor alert my magic and his speed and reach ( as a winged demon with black magic should have) was father and faster... and he quickly disposed of me with Terror of the Pit. The most important thing here is that I could have possibly defeated the winged demon and then looted spells and treasure from the shrine. But I did not prepare well enough. The game offers circumstances with which to hurry and others to take time. When you are playing with other players the dynamic is really interesting because the game really opens up and entire narratives form. I had paired with a Wood Girl as the Sorceror and her speedy bow and my Fiery Blast and Lightning spells were really nice together. When she was killed by goblins I was actually quite sad. Anyways. Magic Realm is not perfect and is very unforgiving early on. Its entry fee is very high as you have no doubt discovered. There are games where i get frustrated because the stakes are high and you can just get killed in a very inglorious and tedious fashion. But, when you achieve certain things and find certain treasures and acquire more powerful weapons and spells it really opens up. I would say the only thing missing is some really truly heavy boss monsters that could be the end of the quest or story. Its missing its Smaug or Sauroman characters where you aren't just fighting big or small monsters but rather character baddies like the character card you are playing. Adding that narrative might give it the last final amazing touch. Meanwhile I am now two months into playing it and I have not exhausted it at all. I still keep finding weird combinations of events playing out. Thanks for the vid... Sorry for the long comment. ;)
The Hide and Search tables are very clunky ... that could be much more relative to skill levels and repetitive process making succession easier with repeats. Those parts need adjusting for sure.
Thanks for these stories of your experience of the game. My personal wish is to find someone to teach it to me across the table. I know RealmSpeak is probably useful but I’ve had issues downloading it. Might be my computer... I know there is an amazing game in there but it’s just so hard to try to figure it out alone!
@@GeekGamers01 Well you are right about the game in certain regards. There are clunky bits that even experienced players still admit and those things have been left in place even in the 3rd edition rules. I still do not like the search/loot process. I have spent seven days or more often trying to loot treasures. Your mind can project that its just treasure that was buried and nigh impossible to find. Like having to dig the ground or break open doorways. But I feel that successive searches should minus the result by one every search, so that after a week you will have found everything even with bad rolls. Also Player vs Player offers a great view of fight progress as you eventually see that they or you fatigue and wound chits. The veritable hit points/stamina/magic power bars of the game. The game balance is off slightly vs the monsters because you either can beat a monster and then successfully pull it off or can quickly tell that certain monsters require certain speeds to hit or you have to get lucky on the intercept (chart position roll) since you will never undercut (simply by speed or reach). Where as, if it was truly balanced... each monster would have some basic chit stats too.. the bats would eventually run out of fight or move chits as well. So you wouldn't die in a fresh game against a couple bats... because they would fatigue fight and move chits trying to hit and dodge as well. But.. even if this was implemented... four or more bats would wear a single warrior down even if they were in the first week and had all chits available. You can see my point though. Monsters never tire. Players do. Enemy bosses should have a card like the players. So you can see their chits and know if you are getting close to winning.. vs just they are killed or not. So... Magic Realm has its flaws. But, the strange way it works somehow does engage my imagination like the front of the card vs the back. Like i said though I was about into the third week of stubbornly making myself get the game so it was normalized vs a battle trying to simply make work. As a side note.. someone supposedly made a Magic Realm light with simpler mechanics. Similar to the Emperor's game you mentioned. Its called "Arcanum" Search for it on BGG. I have not tried it yet... but I read it was made to address the clunky parts of Magic Realm. Thank you for your videos though. I watched them in the first week and related to them a lot at first. Sadly. I was still stubborn and kept going and now I am cursed to like this game. ;) Which still punishes me for liking it some days.
@@caseycbenn I wish I had the persistence that you did and have not still be stuck on the back side of the card vs. the first, as it were. You make an excellent point about the monsters--and the lack of that detail is one of few not thought of. I have yet to return to my copy of the game as I had planned. Real life events intervened too much for me to have the space of time to devote to it. But its not leaving my collection, that's for sure. Someday... maybe a project for retirement. I had not heard of Arcanum before you mentioned t. I looked it up and its play count is listed at 3-5. I'll investigate further, however, to see if its viable solo somehow. Thanks for the tip and your insights into this beautiful and frustrating game.
@@GeekGamers01 Yes, only during the pandemic could I have attempted such a massive investment into this ridiculous game. Thank you for your videos. They were a part of my research in late June early July. Your assessment is correct for most people. It is such a massive overhaul of mental real estate to make it work. I like it but I can admit that for most people Runebound and others give this same feel for a lot less self torture. ;)
The fact that your sign off makes me want to acquire and learn this even more than I did probably underlines my status as a foetid subterranean nerd. Grappling with this sounds like heaven to me! The one thing missing from most solo fantasy games for me has been complexity.
AndrewSFTSN Yes I COMPLETELY agree with your comment about the lack of complex fantasy games and that indeed is also what will make me come back to it...someday.
My holy grail is to one day design something super complex an immersive around fantasy roleplay with a party of adventurers - I think there are well and truly enough accessible options on there and I think there should be something for the player that wants to model everything from fatigue to injury location to light sources to food to curses to poison in the medium of cardboard...one day...never say never!
Rules complexity getting in the way of experiencing the fantasy, is something every game is guilty of when its played by someone not advanced enough to learn it. So this isn't really a flaw in the design. Its just out of step with the mental level of the majority of gamers (like me). I have read accounts of players hating this game ...until they finally learned it. Then it became their favorite. I really envy them. The game designer was a computer programmer who had spent his game-design career serving customers with similarly technical careers. That explains how oblivious he was to how anyone outside that group would cope with that level of complexity.
Thanks for doing another video on your quest to understand Magic Realm! This nicely wraps it up, even if there's no true happy end (yet). I agree that ~30 hours of effort should really be sufficient to have a good enough grasp on a game to tell if it's worthwhile or not. As I'd mentioned previously, I had given up in frustration when I first tried to make sense of the rules almost 3 years ago. But now I'm really ready to give it another go. Maybe you'll revisit the game some day and it'll click for you, too!
I absolutely will revisit it--probably next summer. And I certainly believe the game is "worthwhile" but it just isn't worth it for me right now with my life the way it is and my gaming time the way it is. In another life (maybe if I had known about this game when I was in college, for example), I could have seen giving it a real go with a bunch of friends if we had it set up in the attic of our house. I wish you much luck and fortitude in giving it another shot!
I'm currently wandering through the morass of rules, aids, guides, videos, tutorials, reviews, and endless forum posts to try and tame this beast. I'm enjoying the challenge for now. It's now "next summer." Are you going to enter the realm again?
thingamarob So timely that you should ask! I just was looking at the game two nights ago and thinking about it. If I did it, I know I’d have to go rogue to make it work for me. Some day maybe I will meet someone who knows the game and can teach it to me...but in the meantime my thoughts are how I could find or make up some other rules to let me enjoy the experience. If I do that I will post about it. Good luck in your quest to tame this charming beast.
This game has followed me from move to move for 40 some years and every time I've taken it out I lost interest before I even started the set up. I think watching this saved me from another attempt, it sounds like a great game for some people, just not for me. Your "I want to be the guy on the front of the card, not the back" analogy is spot on. Thanks for saving me some time, and thanks for the redirect to Runebound Second Edition. That's in my collection too still in shrink. Time to rectify that.
Oh yes do open your Runebound. It may take some house rules for solo but it’s a blast, as I’ve discussed in other vids. It’s probably in my top 5 of all time for fantasy adventure and certainly has longevity. I still have my MR. I sold off all my rules apparatus stuff but kept the main game. I see myself taking it out again ... maybe... but mostly with wishful thinking
The issue with the rules is that it is easier to learn by the programmed instruction (1st or 2nd) but those make a complete hash of using the rules for reference. In addition, there were some ambiguous and contradictory rules. 3rd Ed fixes that part. It is not a learn-to-play document. Once you learn the game mechanics it does have a rich narrative. But that is a big mountain to climb.
quan7umjack Yes all true. I have not given up for good. I keep thinking about it and suspect I will get it out again before long. I really WANT to appreciate it fully.
I agree that on paper second edition is the best place to get you going (if you cant join a group of experts to have it taught) Third is there to answer rules questions and works best in an electronic version you can search.
I actually like the numbered style rules. I often hear people bashing them, and sure... rules them selves can be complicated. But it's not the numbers in them selves which makes the rules complicated. The example shown here at 11:50 could (without further context) just as well be an example of good indexing. On the contrary. In rules which only have 1 level of sectioning you can often end up wondering exactly which sentence in a 1 page text it is they think explains your question.
Might be bit late to jump in, but maybe it will help. Having struggled with MR for almost as much as you did, I also gave it up... until... a couple of years ago I discovered MAGIC REALM LIGHT 30 (www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/176070/magic-realm-light-30). I would have never thought one could have simplified MR rules to make it almost instantly playable, while retaining 90% of its mechanics and most of the feel of the original game. To start playing you need to print 1 (one!) play sheet and a few pages of rules and you are good to go. It makes it much easier to understand all the basics of the game, including combat (which is not simplified, by the way) and basically shows that MR is a fairly simple game at its core. With only 6 Characters (each with only 6 chits) and travelling only through 6 regions (caves, mountains and forests) you would, however, learn all the basic mechanics of the Big MR without being distracted by the countless detail of the numerous rulebooks. Amazingly, despite its simplicity, this game creates a good story and feels as rich as the Big MR... I am getting back to the Big MR using the recently published excellent tutorial scenarios (www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/2266045/new-magic-realm-tutorial-project-scenario-guide) that teach you to do more or less one thing at a time (in the first one your goal is just to move around and visit locations hiding from monsters, in the next one you only look for treasures etc.). What I discovered is that now, having played MRL30, I find the Big Realm much more accessible than before: it feels like it just adds a few extra rules to what I know already. MR has so much to offer, so - with these extra tools - it's probably worth another try?
Yes I have played MR30. It's a nice effort but I'd have to disagree that it has anything to do with the feel of MR. Thanks for the link to the new tutorial scenarios. I will check them out. EDIT: just took a look and they seem an incredible piece of work but unfortunately use the redesigned game chits and that's not what I've got. I don't know how significant the differences are but that's yet another level of translation to do...
I just discovered your channel and have been binge listening for the last few days. I'm not shocked that you didn't love the game at first, but I am confident you would absolutely love it if you kept at it. That's the big barrier to the game; it is really not *that* complex or long. Certainly, it's no worse than many big box FFG games, but you *have* to play it many times to understand it. There's no other way. Eventually, the mechanics fade into the background and the narrative emerges, like a good musician sees past the scales and keys, and instead sees the color and mood of the music. The other day, I was playing the Magician, who's not a great character, but one grewt thing he can do is transform other living things, so I was poking around the dragon's treasure hoard with some hired swordsmen. We were attacked, but successfully transformed it into a squirrel! Now the beast was no match for us, right? It's a 3-on-one fight with a squirrel, but the little sucker was just a little faster than all of us, and managed to scurry around and evade all our attacks for the rest of the day until rhe potency of my magic ritual wore off and it turned back into a dragon. The magician was left with no choice but to flee and leave his companions to their doom. Cue "Yakety Sax". Eventually, you don't think about the procedures and you just get the vivid mental image of three bumbling idiots desperately chasing a squirrel around a cave hoping to catch it before it becomes a fearsome dragon. The image of the White Knight being locked in mortal combat with a tremendous serpent to the point of total exhaustion, wrapped in the beast's coils, summoning all his remaining strength to take the creature's head at the very last moment before ir strikes. The Witch King peering down from his mountain perch to the land below, seeing the smoke and hearing the roar, then settling down to prepare the necessary enchantments for his best anti-dragon spell. It's just such a nuanced little lived-in world that you get to play around and have fun in without all the stats and the charts and gigantic time commitment of an RPG if you can muster up the patience to learn itd language.
I do not disagree that I think I could love this game, however I am concluding that the only way this will happen is if somebody can teach it to me in person. Your comment is making me think I should take out the rules again, but I fear that I just do not have the motivation to put in the learning time to get out the play value. Some day in the future, somebody will be able to teach it to me in person. I am glad to hear you have found my channel and hope that you enjoy the videos! Thanks for your thoughtful comment.
@@GeekGamers01 Have ypu ever tried Realmspeak? It's a little bit dated from a software standpoint, and playing on a computer is never as much fun, but it does allow you to set up a whole new game at the touch of a button and enforces all the rules for you so you can just play around and try different things, play multiple characters and see how they might interact and work together. It's the next best thing to having someone teach it to you. Frankly, I think the worst advice that anyone ever gave about the game was to abandon the 1st edition rulebook. It may have had some issues, but later revisions just compounded the barriers to entry in my view. Anyway, keep up the great work. Looking forward to seeing more from the channel.
I definitely agree that the hurdle of getting familiar with the rules is one of the biggest difficulties I had with learning Magic Realm. It's so dense and there's so much going on that it's hard to hold it all in your head at once. I do love how all the characters are so different, even in just the way the various denizens react to them. It's probably the game I like the most while I still don't really understand fully how it plays, despite spending a good number of hours myself reading rules and trying to play the first two encounters. Hopefully in the future when you do take it out again and go through the rules again you'll have a better comprehension and start feeling like the artwork rather than the stats. As for the other games you mentioned, Runebound is something I've had a lot of fun with as well, but Search for the Emperor's Treasure I had not so I will check it out.
Adam Piskel I hope so too but it’s challenging to comprehend that for an experienced gamer such as myself 30 hours doesn’t get closer to the experience than I felt I got.
For sure, and you're not wrong to feel frustrated over how much time you spent with it and still weren't able to get the experience you were looking for. It's definitely in there, but it's just such a-- dense set of rules. And I know people who know this game when they tell me about sessions they had it just seems so magical, but they have that understanding necessary and I'm almost baffled at how they come across it. Perhaps as you say you need to play it multiplayer (Even if you don't necessarily go in with the intention of pvping) or there's some other _something_ necessary. I hope you manage to find it or figure out what's missing. And if you do, you let us know as well.
Adam Piskel I certainly don’t feel as if my feelings are wrong. If anything, they are unwanted (as in: I really wanted to love this game). And yes, should I play again and have a vastly different experience I will share that on vid. As to what’s missing: maybe it is just playing it with an actual person who already has had the magical experience.
I think it's all down to where your expectations originate from... As a wargame, with a Fantasy bent, it is actually rather good - it generates a lot of narrative - especially if you play 4 or more characters that might work together or go into conflict. As an RPG boardgame replacement, I think it would disappoint. I'm one of the few that plays RPG's solo - I'm near the end of one of the printed Traveller Adventures (the key to soloing RPG's is to work out party dynamics and write down the story as it unfolds - I use notepad on the computer). This Traveller Adventure will generate a more concrete and coherent mind's-eye vision - simply because of the freedom that RPGs impart. With regard to rules, Magic Realm's hiding rules require 2d6 (rather that 1d6) and you always take the higher number - in fact most of the game relies on this mechanic. You have to be careful as it really skews the results. I like it, as it ensures that most of the game's mechanics are not truly random, instead, they follow a probability curve. The mechanics of hiding might be simple, but the impact on play and narrative are huge. The other rules to highlight are the combat system. This does use dice to a certain extent. They are used to determine a monster's attack positioning, as well as its chosen tactics. A tactical change by a monster can really throw a spanner in the works! The dice are also used for any missile/magic too. For me, Magic Realms shines in the arena of creating a living breathing world - something very few board-games manage to achieve. How many board-games simulate you hearing the patter of feet or perhaps the smelling of a foul stench before you even see any monsters? It certainly has its flaws, but for what it does, it is currently unmatched.
Really Virtual Excellent points and I don’t doubt the merits as you say they are. That’s why I really wanted to play and experience the game. Truly I just need somebody to teach it to me in person... I believe it unparalleled, I really do. I just couldn’t find my way to the experience.
what other game do you think provides the same neverending adventure feel? The replayability in this one is what keeps me interested in it but i never played it.
Great question.... probably no other single game. Shadows of Brimstone with all the expansions etc. maybe. I don't care for that game but that might... Runebound 2nd edition has lots of big box expansions that change the board.
I do believe you hit the nail squarely on the head. The "idea" of Magic Realm is awesome, the execution is daunting. When I was younger in the very early 80s my brother had purchased this game. I was just getting into RPG but had come from an Avalon Hill board game back ground so I thought "These guys know how to make games so this will be the best of DND and Squad Leader". But unlike peanut butter and chocolate this was not the case. I can remember when my brother was not around, pulling out Magic Realm and going over all the components and spending hours just setting it up and imagining what the game would be like to play, never playing the game as it was way to complex for that. Even now I the only modern experience I have had with Magic Realm is the Java game you can download somewhere which took a lot of the guess work out of the mechanics but was still a very dry experience. So in the end I have fond memories of Magic Realm but I am not as brave as you to try to tackle the thing.
As always: Thank you for your insights. It was a very, very interesting series. I always enjoy your meta-analysis, and also this point of what you were hoping for and what you got. It is my issue with CoC.
I've been learning this as well. Mostly working through the amazing Book of Learning for every character. Can't disagree with the things you said although I have no interest in this as a PvP game. And probably all your comments are why this has never been reprinted. (rights aside of course). I still haven't decided if I'm going to give up on this. I think part of my hesitation is that I'd love to get an experienced player to sit down with me at a convention or something like that and go through the game once. Especially the combat. I actually think I get it, but without someone else there to see what I'm doing, I'd have no idea whether I was doing it right.
Kevin Erskine Yep I feel as you do and am sure that the actual gameplay, as much as the rights, would be an issue. To simplify/strip down you wouldn’t have the same game.
I only play with the 1st edition rules anymore, including the General errata and the optional rules. I've found that for the vast majority of games the over detailed ruling on every edge case in the third edition rules is completely unnecessary. They seem to be written for tournament play. Even if some edge issue comes up, it's often better just to interpret something on your own and get on with the game, because referencing it in the fan rules derails everything as you read multiple entries attempting to clarify the issue. They really over complicate the combat system, which is essentially very simple, with all sorts of edge cases about natives, horses, and rare spells that seldom come up. To learn the game, I would read the first four encounters in the first ed rules and play that. Then you can add natives and magic when ready. The second edition rules are also rather terrible and vividly illustrate the dangers of letting game designer of a tight editorial leash. Even the setup rules complicate what is essentially, lay out the counters and treasure according to the labeled boxes into 3 plus pages of nonsense. I don't even think the revised search table or monster repositioning from the 2nd and 3rd are worth bothering with, and those are the major changes to the game. Most everything else is the optional rules from the 1st ed book. This game really suffers from the cult of difficulty and heavy gamer syndrome that many gamers on BGG succumb to. It's a false difficulty based on group think and the mass of fan generated tutorials and re-writes desperate to catalog everything the game could bring up. The problem with that approach is that if you know about all the little complexities of edge case interactions in advance, there is nothing left to discover in the actual gameplay.
John Middleton Excellent comments and analysis of this. I was just contemplating this game last night as I moved it to get to something else. Since this series of vids I have not been back to it but planned to this summer. My plans may be changing but when I do I plan to keep it as simple as possible because I do agree with what you’re saying here.
I'm surprised you cant find someone locally to teach you this game. If I had someone in my neck of the woods as sincere as you in trying to understand the genius of this game, i'd help them out in a heartbeat.
Aaron E. Steele I must admit I agree. I thought my vid might cause someone to reach out: I live in a pretty big place :) I could probably pursue the quest to find someone with more vigor. Maybe that is a project for next summer...
Thanks for summing up your experience in a simple way. "I wanted this, but got this. " I have been looking at this game for quite some time but your summary made me put acquiring on hold. Your videos are great. Keep it up.
Great video! I value your insights and opinions, while I’m sorry the game didn’t work out for you, I appreciate your honest feedback about it. On a related note, are there any other games you’re looking forward to? I played pathfinder acg after watching your video on it, would love to find some other games to keep an eye out for per your recommendation :)
fuumaxkamui Thank you. I am looking forward to HEXplore It and hope to bring you a video on that in the coming months. Ditto Legends Untold which I presented when it was kickstarted and hope to demo with the finished game in a future vid.
You certainly gave the Realm enough chances. If you give it another try, it should probably be with an experienced Realmer assisting/teaching. I decided to 'drink the Kool-Aid' and had the Book of Learning printed. I'm working through that and referring back to Rules 3.1 to get the details. So far, it is making sense. I'm only on Day 2 of the second character, though. And I'm working on it without the help of a three year old! You should get a Merit Badge for Juggling. :-)
:) I forgot to mention in my vid the awesome efforts of the writer of the Book of Learning. For me, it only made sense after I had spent all those hours with the game (I only ever read the White Knight section). I do agree: I need to find a Realmer IRL to play with me. Kudos to you for persisting! I'm sure there is gold at the end of the rainbow. It's just too long a rainbow for me right now.
It is too attractive for me to play this game, I tried on Vassal. I don't know if I played right, I play only some rounds with one character, and I stuck on the combat :) .... I order RuneBound I think it's a great great game from the tube I saw.. I don't know if you film one on RuneBound... for this game it's too long, and I am confusing on many stuff ... Great tube as usual ..... Thanks
Pierre Abou Naoum Runebound 2nd edition is one of my all-time favorite games. (I haven’t played the third edition, which is rather different.). I haven’t made a Runebound video per se-the world doesn’t need another-but I have talked about that game in many other vids. Have I done a top 5 all-around? If so it would be there as #2 PS: I totally get what you say about Magic Realm. I understand why some love it but trying to deal with those dates mechanics now is too much (for me at least)
@@GeekGamers01 I replay the tubes connected to magic realm and what I realise is that I did my combat wrongly by remove from play the shit that I use in a round in as used marker until I don't have any marker to fight later .... I am just confused about the box in top of the combat sheet 'used this round'....
12:45 ... It is odd for you to say "in a strange, strange way it might play better if you played it as a conflict game." Magic Realm was explicitly intended as a conflict game between players. There is s scoring chart where every type of action is given a point value, so the players who chase different goals can be measured against each other, and a wnner declared, even if they did completely unrelated things. The killer and the gold-finder and the explorer are all tracked on the scoring sheet, so the gold finder could "defeat" the killer just by being better at finding than than the killer was at killing. Magic Realm was never intended to be fun for a single player. Not even intended to be fun for cooperation. Competition is baked into the game.
If you need a real life tutor, try posting in the bgg magic realm forums. Plenty of teachers have expressed interest in teaching this game. I don't know what area you are in, but if you're not too far I could even teach.
This is a game which is screaming to be re-designed from the top-down including the rules and physical game pieces. Sadly legal disputes are a reality.
This is the best video I have seen about this game. I have owned 3 copies over the years, and think my current copy which is unpunched may just go up for sale.
Flip the unpunched MR for a profit and invest the proceeds in the Brown Forman distilled Early Times Bottled-in-Bond. If the BF ET BiB is sold out then buy Old Forester 'Red Label 100 Proof', Amoeba Wars and/or Wizard's Quest. Or Titan.
I had been putting off learning Magic Realm for a very long time. I was born in 77 and around 1985 found a unused Magic Realm box in my grandma's basement with my little brother. It stuck out in the storage shelves due to its art. We took it upstairs, as if we had been in a dungeon ourselves and unearthed an ancient treasure, and asked grandma. She explained that the kids got it (our aunt, uncles, and dad) and none could figure out the rules. I was just a kid but I did setup the tiles and put chits on the tiles and setup the treasures and monsters. After about an hour and a half of reading the rules everytime I was trying to do setup I felt I had done it right. My little brother watched part of this at the start and took off and entertained himself. He came back when I was ready and we played Black Knight and White Knight. We played about three turns before we ended up on tile that summoned bats. These bats killed us. I am sure I didn't understand the combat system but I tried to follow with the rule book and we fatigued and wounded chits and ultimately were both killed. Feeling we didn't understand why we should choose one form of attack over another and why the lineup. This quick merciless end to our heroes after a long setup killed our interest. .... I told myself I would return to really do this right someday. We put away the mint condition Magic Realm and I never saw it again. My grandma moved and we never knew what happened to that played once Magic Realm. Fast forward to 2006. I rediscover Magic Realm... having completely forgot about it.. in 2006. I was so busy at the time though I never was able to try and learn. Fast forward again to 2020 and the Pandemic. I rediscover Magic Realm because I learned Root and was immediately reminded of Magic Realm. If you don't know Root it is an area control war game that is cute and quick but borrows certain mechanics from Magic Realm. Well, here I was... 43 years old... and... with mind and time to learn Magic Realm. I will say this... it took me about two weeks of routine documentation reading before I even attempted to try RealmSpeak. Thankfully Realmspeak made the process easy to try because it has an autosetup. Though you can setup if you want. I like setting up the map manually. That is fun. Realmspeak was there to reach into and keep trying different ideas and read new material and apply it to the game without the setup time. I was still kind of flying blind though as that combat system still had me guessing. Anyways about three weeks in I played a game that was hosted on TTS (Table Top Simulator) by a very experienced player on Board Game Geek forums. That game was truly my first real Magic Realm game... though I had some fun playing Realmspeak it was a kind of half blind... ok... I guess I did it right..process. Once I played with Gex/Serious Gamer from BGG on the Table Top Simulator he was able to fill in the details quickly and distinctly. The game really clicked that day. I was able to reference back to previous games and go "Ah hah.. oh ok... I get it now". Suddenly all the complexity was drained down to some very simple mechanics that just contained a lot of details and exceptions BUT... the game had revealed itself to me and I became quickly in love where as before it felt very clunky and chained to its own minutia. Now... having said that... Magic Realm does still... even when you fully see it clearly... have clunky bits.. BUT... I must say it is my favorite game now. I routinely play in Realmspeak and it is still surprising me. Once you get the mechanics down to the simple processes and they are natural to you,,, they really aren't that complex at all. Its like twenty to thirty modules become compartmentalized into references that still spawn from basic concepts. Moving around. Discovering the world. running into monsters and locations and possible treasure sites. Then when you begin to understand each character it becomes fun to understand each one's relationship to the larger game and strategy and really immersion. What happens is a great narrative forms from these simple things and you sometimes get an epic story or even a funny tragic ending. There are strange circumstances of detail that can happen in Magic Realm that no other game can recreate... not even close. The key... is to play with someone who can help you get going and understand as you go along what and why the world and situations work. Once I got past the combat system with Knights and fighters I began to do the Magic characters. Particlularly the Sorceror or the Magician. These Magic characters really unlock the world. The Sorceror can summon magic on his own quite well. Though enchanting tiles can extend magic chits on many occasions and in some circumstances... enchanting a tile is the only way to use spells that aren't native to your magic type since most magic users have one or two types of native magic. The Magician HAS to enchant the world to be effective. He has chits from each magic type 2 through 6 but not enough to enchant one and cast a spell. He is forced to summon the magic of the world in order to cast his spells. Also to find artifacts and enchant the artifact with magic so that it becomes a source of magic which will allow him to cast certain hard to find spells. Anyways... I will say this. Magic Realm turned out to be quite amazing for me. The last game I was quite confidant and ran my sorceror to the top of the High Pass to kill a Winged Demon and I didn't hide nor alert my magic and his speed and reach ( as a winged demon with black magic should have) was father and faster... and he quickly disposed of me with Terror of the Pit. The most important thing here is that I could have possibly defeated the winged demon and then looted spells and treasure from the shrine. But I did not prepare well enough. The game offers circumstances with which to hurry and others to take time. When you are playing with other players the dynamic is really interesting because the game really opens up and entire narratives form. I had paired with a Wood Girl as the Sorceror and her speedy bow and my Fiery Blast and Lightning spells were really nice together. When she was killed by goblins I was actually quite sad. Anyways. Magic Realm is not perfect and is very unforgiving early on. Its entry fee is very high as you have no doubt discovered. There are games where i get frustrated because the stakes are high and you can just get killed in a very inglorious and tedious fashion. But, when you achieve certain things and find certain treasures and acquire more powerful weapons and spells it really opens up. I would say the only thing missing is some really truly heavy boss monsters that could be the end of the quest or story. Its missing its Smaug or Sauroman characters where you aren't just fighting big or small monsters but rather character baddies like the character card you are playing. Adding that narrative might give it the last final amazing touch. Meanwhile I am now two months into playing it and I have not exhausted it at all. I still keep finding weird combinations of events playing out. Thanks for the vid... Sorry for the long comment. ;)
The Hide and Search tables are very clunky ... that could be much more relative to skill levels and repetitive process making succession easier with repeats. Those parts need adjusting for sure.
Thanks for these stories of your experience of the game. My personal wish is to find someone to teach it to me across the table. I know RealmSpeak is probably useful but I’ve had issues downloading it. Might be my computer... I know there is an amazing game in there but it’s just so hard to try to figure it out alone!
@@GeekGamers01 Well you are right about the game in certain regards. There are clunky bits that even experienced players still admit and those things have been left in place even in the 3rd edition rules. I still do not like the search/loot process. I have spent seven days or more often trying to loot treasures. Your mind can project that its just treasure that was buried and nigh impossible to find. Like having to dig the ground or break open doorways. But I feel that successive searches should minus the result by one every search, so that after a week you will have found everything even with bad rolls. Also Player vs Player offers a great view of fight progress as you eventually see that they or you fatigue and wound chits. The veritable hit points/stamina/magic power bars of the game. The game balance is off slightly vs the monsters because you either can beat a monster and then successfully pull it off or can quickly tell that certain monsters require certain speeds to hit or you have to get lucky on the intercept (chart position roll) since you will never undercut (simply by speed or reach). Where as, if it was truly balanced... each monster would have some basic chit stats too.. the bats would eventually run out of fight or move chits as well. So you wouldn't die in a fresh game against a couple bats... because they would fatigue fight and move chits trying to hit and dodge as well. But.. even if this was implemented... four or more bats would wear a single warrior down even if they were in the first week and had all chits available. You can see my point though. Monsters never tire. Players do. Enemy bosses should have a card like the players. So you can see their chits and know if you are getting close to winning.. vs just they are killed or not. So... Magic Realm has its flaws. But, the strange way it works somehow does engage my imagination like the front of the card vs the back. Like i said though I was about into the third week of stubbornly making myself get the game so it was normalized vs a battle trying to simply make work. As a side note.. someone supposedly made a Magic Realm light with simpler mechanics. Similar to the Emperor's game you mentioned. Its called "Arcanum" Search for it on BGG. I have not tried it yet... but I read it was made to address the clunky parts of Magic Realm. Thank you for your videos though. I watched them in the first week and related to them a lot at first. Sadly. I was still stubborn and kept going and now I am cursed to like this game. ;) Which still punishes me for liking it some days.
@@caseycbenn I wish I had the persistence that you did and have not still be stuck on the back side of the card vs. the first, as it were. You make an excellent point about the monsters--and the lack of that detail is one of few not thought of.
I have yet to return to my copy of the game as I had planned. Real life events intervened too much for me to have the space of time to devote to it. But its not leaving my collection, that's for sure.
Someday... maybe a project for retirement.
I had not heard of Arcanum before you mentioned t. I looked it up and its play count is listed at 3-5. I'll investigate further, however, to see if its viable solo somehow. Thanks for the tip and your insights into this beautiful and frustrating game.
@@GeekGamers01 Yes, only during the pandemic could I have attempted such a massive investment into this ridiculous game. Thank you for your videos. They were a part of my research in late June early July. Your assessment is correct for most people. It is such a massive overhaul of mental real estate to make it work. I like it but I can admit that for most people Runebound and others give this same feel for a lot less self torture. ;)
The fact that your sign off makes me want to acquire and learn this even more than I did probably underlines my status as a foetid subterranean nerd. Grappling with this sounds like heaven to me! The one thing missing from most solo fantasy games for me has been complexity.
AndrewSFTSN Yes I COMPLETELY agree with your comment about the lack of complex fantasy games and that indeed is also what will make me come back to it...someday.
My holy grail is to one day design something super complex an immersive around fantasy roleplay with a party of adventurers - I think there are well and truly enough accessible options on there and I think there should be something for the player that wants to model everything from fatigue to injury location to light sources to food to curses to poison in the medium of cardboard...one day...never say never!
AndrewSFTSN Be sure to let me know when you do!
Rules complexity getting in the way of experiencing the fantasy, is something every game is guilty of when its played by someone not advanced enough to learn it. So this isn't really a flaw in the design. Its just out of step with the mental level of the majority of gamers (like me).
I have read accounts of players hating this game ...until they finally learned it. Then it became their favorite. I really envy them.
The game designer was a computer programmer who had spent his game-design career serving customers with similarly technical careers. That explains how oblivious he was to how anyone outside that group would cope with that level of complexity.
Thanks for doing another video on your quest to understand Magic Realm! This nicely wraps it up, even if there's no true happy end (yet). I agree that ~30 hours of effort should really be sufficient to have a good enough grasp on a game to tell if it's worthwhile or not.
As I'd mentioned previously, I had given up in frustration when I first tried to make sense of the rules almost 3 years ago. But now I'm really ready to give it another go. Maybe you'll revisit the game some day and it'll click for you, too!
I absolutely will revisit it--probably next summer. And I certainly believe the game is "worthwhile" but it just isn't worth it for me right now with my life the way it is and my gaming time the way it is. In another life (maybe if I had known about this game when I was in college, for example), I could have seen giving it a real go with a bunch of friends if we had it set up in the attic of our house.
I wish you much luck and fortitude in giving it another shot!
I'm currently wandering through the morass of rules, aids, guides, videos, tutorials, reviews, and endless forum posts to try and tame this beast. I'm enjoying the challenge for now. It's now "next summer." Are you going to enter the realm again?
thingamarob So timely that you should ask! I just was looking at the game two nights ago and thinking about it. If I did it, I know I’d have to go rogue to make it work for me. Some day maybe I will meet someone who knows the game and can teach it to me...but in the meantime my thoughts are how I could find or make up some other rules to let me enjoy the experience. If I do that I will post about it.
Good luck in your quest to tame this charming beast.
This game has followed me from move to move for 40 some years and every time I've taken it out I lost interest before I even started the set up. I think watching this saved me from another attempt, it sounds like a great game for some people, just not for me. Your "I want to be the guy on the front of the card, not the back" analogy is spot on. Thanks for saving me some time, and thanks for the redirect to Runebound Second Edition. That's in my collection too still in shrink. Time to rectify that.
Oh yes do open your Runebound. It may take some house rules for solo but it’s a blast, as I’ve discussed in other vids. It’s probably in my top 5 of all time for fantasy adventure and certainly has longevity.
I still have my MR. I sold off all my rules apparatus stuff but kept the main game. I see myself taking it out again ... maybe... but mostly with wishful thinking
The issue with the rules is that it is easier to learn by the programmed instruction (1st or 2nd) but those make a complete hash of using the rules for reference. In addition, there were some ambiguous and contradictory rules. 3rd Ed fixes that part. It is not a learn-to-play document.
Once you learn the game mechanics it does have a rich narrative. But that is a big mountain to climb.
quan7umjack Yes all true. I have not given up for good. I keep thinking about it and suspect I will get it out again before long. I really WANT to appreciate it fully.
You should try Dragon's Down which is a modern and simplified version of Magic Realm!
I agree that on paper second edition is the best place to get you going (if you cant join a group of experts to have it taught) Third is there to answer rules questions and works best in an electronic version you can search.
I actually like the numbered style rules.
I often hear people bashing them, and sure... rules them selves can be complicated. But it's not the numbers in them selves which makes the rules complicated.
The example shown here at 11:50 could (without further context) just as well be an example of good indexing.
On the contrary. In rules which only have 1 level of sectioning you can often end up wondering exactly which sentence in a 1 page text it is they think explains your question.
Might be bit late to jump in, but maybe it will help. Having struggled with MR for almost as much as you did, I also gave it up... until... a couple of years ago I discovered MAGIC REALM LIGHT 30 (www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/176070/magic-realm-light-30). I would have never thought one could have simplified MR rules to make it almost instantly playable, while retaining 90% of its mechanics and most of the feel of the original game. To start playing you need to print 1 (one!) play sheet and a few pages of rules and you are good to go. It makes it much easier to understand all the basics of the game, including combat (which is not simplified, by the way) and basically shows that MR is a fairly simple game at its core. With only 6 Characters (each with only 6 chits) and travelling only through 6 regions (caves, mountains and forests) you would, however, learn all the basic mechanics of the Big MR without being distracted by the countless detail of the numerous rulebooks. Amazingly, despite its simplicity, this game creates a good story and feels as rich as the Big MR...
I am getting back to the Big MR using the recently published excellent tutorial scenarios (www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/2266045/new-magic-realm-tutorial-project-scenario-guide) that teach you to do more or less one thing at a time (in the first one your goal is just to move around and visit locations hiding from monsters, in the next one you only look for treasures etc.). What I discovered is that now, having played MRL30, I find the Big Realm much more accessible than before: it feels like it just adds a few extra rules to what I know already.
MR has so much to offer, so - with these extra tools - it's probably worth another try?
Yes I have played MR30. It's a nice effort but I'd have to disagree that it has anything to do with the feel of MR. Thanks for the link to the new tutorial scenarios. I will check them out. EDIT: just took a look and they seem an incredible piece of work but unfortunately use the redesigned game chits and that's not what I've got. I don't know how significant the differences are but that's yet another level of translation to do...
I just discovered your channel and have been binge listening for the last few days. I'm not shocked that you didn't love the game at first, but I am confident you would absolutely love it if you kept at it. That's the big barrier to the game; it is really not *that* complex or long. Certainly, it's no worse than many big box FFG games, but you *have* to play it many times to understand it. There's no other way. Eventually, the mechanics fade into the background and the narrative emerges, like a good musician sees past the scales and keys, and instead sees the color and mood of the music.
The other day, I was playing the Magician, who's not a great character, but one grewt thing he can do is transform other living things, so I was poking around the dragon's treasure hoard with some hired swordsmen. We were attacked, but successfully transformed it into a squirrel! Now the beast was no match for us, right? It's a 3-on-one fight with a squirrel, but the little sucker was just a little faster than all of us, and managed to scurry around and evade all our attacks for the rest of the day until rhe potency of my magic ritual wore off and it turned back into a dragon. The magician was left with no choice but to flee and leave his companions to their doom. Cue "Yakety Sax".
Eventually, you don't think about the procedures and you just get the vivid mental image of three bumbling idiots desperately chasing a squirrel around a cave hoping to catch it before it becomes a fearsome dragon. The image of the White Knight being locked in mortal combat with a tremendous serpent to the point of total exhaustion, wrapped in the beast's coils, summoning all his remaining strength to take the creature's head at the very last moment before ir strikes. The Witch King peering down from his mountain perch to the land below, seeing the smoke and hearing the roar, then settling down to prepare the necessary enchantments for his best anti-dragon spell.
It's just such a nuanced little lived-in world that you get to play around and have fun in without all the stats and the charts and gigantic time commitment of an RPG if you can muster up the patience to learn itd language.
I do not disagree that I think I could love this game, however I am concluding that the only way this will happen is if somebody can teach it to me in person. Your comment is making me think I should take out the rules again, but I fear that I just do not have the motivation to put in the learning time to get out the play value. Some day in the future, somebody will be able to teach it to me in person.
I am glad to hear you have found my channel and hope that you enjoy the videos! Thanks for your thoughtful comment.
@@GeekGamers01 Have ypu ever tried Realmspeak? It's a little bit dated from a software standpoint, and playing on a computer is never as much fun, but it does allow you to set up a whole new game at the touch of a button and enforces all the rules for you so you can just play around and try different things, play multiple characters and see how they might interact and work together. It's the next best thing to having someone teach it to you.
Frankly, I think the worst advice that anyone ever gave about the game was to abandon the 1st edition rulebook. It may have had some issues, but later revisions just compounded the barriers to entry in my view. Anyway, keep up the great work. Looking forward to seeing more from the channel.
where do i buy?
I definitely agree that the hurdle of getting familiar with the rules is one of the biggest difficulties I had with learning Magic Realm. It's so dense and there's so much going on that it's hard to hold it all in your head at once. I do love how all the characters are so different, even in just the way the various denizens react to them. It's probably the game I like the most while I still don't really understand fully how it plays, despite spending a good number of hours myself reading rules and trying to play the first two encounters. Hopefully in the future when you do take it out again and go through the rules again you'll have a better comprehension and start feeling like the artwork rather than the stats.
As for the other games you mentioned, Runebound is something I've had a lot of fun with as well, but Search for the Emperor's Treasure I had not so I will check it out.
Adam Piskel I hope so too but it’s challenging to comprehend that for an experienced gamer such as myself 30 hours doesn’t get closer to the experience than I felt I got.
For sure, and you're not wrong to feel frustrated over how much time you spent with it and still weren't able to get the experience you were looking for. It's definitely in there, but it's just such a-- dense set of rules. And I know people who know this game when they tell me about sessions they had it just seems so magical, but they have that understanding necessary and I'm almost baffled at how they come across it. Perhaps as you say you need to play it multiplayer (Even if you don't necessarily go in with the intention of pvping) or there's some other _something_ necessary. I hope you manage to find it or figure out what's missing. And if you do, you let us know as well.
Adam Piskel I certainly don’t feel as if my feelings are wrong. If anything, they are unwanted (as in: I really wanted to love this game). And yes, should I play again and have a vastly different experience I will share that on vid.
As to what’s missing: maybe it is just playing it with an actual person who already has had the magical experience.
You should never feel like your feelings are wrong! They're your feelings and are important!
I think it's all down to where your expectations originate from...
As a wargame, with a Fantasy bent, it is actually rather good - it generates a lot of narrative - especially if you play 4 or more characters that might work together or go into conflict. As an RPG boardgame replacement, I think it would disappoint. I'm one of the few that plays RPG's solo - I'm near the end of one of the printed Traveller Adventures (the key to soloing RPG's is to work out party dynamics and write down the story as it unfolds - I use notepad on the computer). This Traveller Adventure will generate a more concrete and coherent mind's-eye vision - simply because of the freedom that RPGs impart.
With regard to rules, Magic Realm's hiding rules require 2d6 (rather that 1d6) and you always take the higher number - in fact most of the game relies on this mechanic. You have to be careful as it really skews the results. I like it, as it ensures that most of the game's mechanics are not truly random, instead, they follow a probability curve. The mechanics of hiding might be simple, but the impact on play and narrative are huge. The other rules to highlight are the combat system. This does use dice to a certain extent. They are used to determine a monster's attack positioning, as well as its chosen tactics. A tactical change by a monster can really throw a spanner in the works! The dice are also used for any missile/magic too.
For me, Magic Realms shines in the arena of creating a living breathing world - something very few board-games manage to achieve. How many board-games simulate you hearing the patter of feet or perhaps the smelling of a foul stench before you even see any monsters? It certainly has its flaws, but for what it does, it is currently unmatched.
Really Virtual Excellent points and I don’t doubt the merits as you say they are. That’s why I really wanted to play and experience the game. Truly I just need somebody to teach it to me in person... I believe it unparalleled, I really do. I just couldn’t find my way to the experience.
what other game do you think provides the same neverending adventure feel? The replayability in this one is what keeps me interested in it but i never played it.
Great question.... probably no other single game. Shadows of Brimstone with all the expansions etc. maybe. I don't care for that game but that might... Runebound 2nd edition has lots of big box expansions that change the board.
"Who doesn't want to be this guy?"
The black knight, because he always triumphs! Lol.
I do believe you hit the nail squarely on the head. The "idea" of Magic Realm is awesome, the execution is daunting.
When I was younger in the very early 80s my brother had purchased this game. I was just getting into RPG but had come from an Avalon Hill board game back ground so I thought "These guys know how to make games so this will be the best of DND and Squad Leader". But unlike peanut butter and chocolate this was not the case.
I can remember when my brother was not around, pulling out Magic Realm and going over all the components and spending hours just setting it up and imagining what the game would be like to play, never playing the game as it was way to complex for that.
Even now I the only modern experience I have had with Magic Realm is the Java game you can download somewhere which took a lot of the guess work out of the mechanics but was still a very dry experience.
So in the end I have fond memories of Magic Realm but I am not as brave as you to try to tackle the thing.
And you say it quite well yourself: there is a lot of imagining what the game can offer rather than having the experience.
As always: Thank you for your insights. It was a very, very interesting series. I always enjoy your meta-analysis, and also this point of what you were hoping for and what you got. It is my issue with CoC.
They sell the ideal, but players play the real. When the two are far apart, disappointment results. MR is definitely a product of its time.
J Potter Well said.
I've been learning this as well. Mostly working through the amazing Book of Learning for every character. Can't disagree with the things you said although I have no interest in this as a PvP game. And probably all your comments are why this has never been reprinted. (rights aside of course). I still haven't decided if I'm going to give up on this. I think part of my hesitation is that I'd love to get an experienced player to sit down with me at a convention or something like that and go through the game once. Especially the combat. I actually think I get it, but without someone else there to see what I'm doing, I'd have no idea whether I was doing it right.
Kevin Erskine Yep I feel as you do and am sure that the actual gameplay, as much as the rights, would be an issue. To simplify/strip down you wouldn’t have the same game.
I dunno.
This seems to be a "cult classic", but I think it might be more fun and easier to just play an RPG.
Yep. My conclusions after spending 30 hours or so with it.
By the way, and off-topic, but i'm still playin D100 dungeon and having a good time!
john conner Hey glad to hear that. I may do another short vid on it. I’m still playing too! Glad you are enjoying it.
I only play with the 1st edition rules anymore, including the General errata and the optional rules. I've found that for the vast majority of games the over detailed ruling on every edge case in the third edition rules is completely unnecessary. They seem to be written for tournament play. Even if some edge issue comes up, it's often better just to interpret something on your own and get on with the game, because referencing it in the fan rules derails everything as you read multiple entries attempting to clarify the issue. They really over complicate the combat system, which is essentially very simple, with all sorts of edge cases about natives, horses, and rare spells that seldom come up.
To learn the game, I would read the first four encounters in the first ed rules and play that. Then you can add natives and magic when ready.
The second edition rules are also rather terrible and vividly illustrate the dangers of letting game designer of a tight editorial leash. Even the setup rules complicate what is essentially, lay out the counters and treasure according to the labeled boxes into 3 plus pages of nonsense.
I don't even think the revised search table or monster repositioning from the 2nd and 3rd are worth bothering with, and those are the major changes to the game. Most everything else is the optional rules from the 1st ed book.
This game really suffers from the cult of difficulty and heavy gamer syndrome that many gamers on BGG succumb to. It's a false difficulty based on group think and the mass of fan generated tutorials and re-writes desperate to catalog everything the game could bring up. The problem with that approach is that if you know about all the little complexities of edge case interactions in advance, there is nothing left to discover in the actual gameplay.
John Middleton Excellent comments and analysis of this. I was just contemplating this game last night as I moved it to get to something else. Since this series of vids I have not been back to it but planned to this summer. My plans may be changing but when I do I plan to keep it as simple as possible because I do agree with what you’re saying here.
I'm surprised you cant find someone locally to teach you this game. If I had someone in my neck of the woods as sincere as you in trying to understand the genius of this game, i'd help them out in a heartbeat.
Aaron E. Steele I must admit I agree. I thought my vid might cause someone to reach out: I live in a pretty big place :)
I could probably pursue the quest to find someone with more vigor. Maybe that is a project for next summer...
My favorite board game!
Great review. Referring to the General made it for me.
keithu9999 Thanks for the comment and for watching. With all the at-home time I have right now I’ve been thinking of taking it out again.
Thanks for summing up your experience in a simple way.
"I wanted this, but got this. "
I have been looking at this game for quite some time but your summary made me put acquiring on hold.
Your videos are great. Keep it up.
Shawn Baldwin Thanks! As it is pricey to obtain in trade or purchase, I guess I am glad I helped if you were on the fence.
Great video! I value your insights and opinions, while I’m sorry the game didn’t work out for you, I appreciate your honest feedback about it.
On a related note, are there any other games you’re looking forward to? I played pathfinder acg after watching your video on it, would love to find some other games to keep an eye out for per your recommendation :)
fuumaxkamui Thank you. I am looking forward to HEXplore It and hope to bring you a video on that in the coming months. Ditto Legends Untold which I presented when it was kickstarted and hope to demo with the finished game in a future vid.
You certainly gave the Realm enough chances. If you give it another try, it should probably be with an experienced Realmer assisting/teaching. I decided to 'drink the Kool-Aid' and had the Book of Learning printed. I'm working through that and referring back to Rules 3.1 to get the details. So far, it is making sense. I'm only on Day 2 of the second character, though. And I'm working on it without the help of a three year old! You should get a Merit Badge for Juggling. :-)
:)
I forgot to mention in my vid the awesome efforts of the writer of the Book of Learning. For me, it only made sense after I had spent all those hours with the game (I only ever read the White Knight section). I do agree: I need to find a Realmer IRL to play with me. Kudos to you for persisting! I'm sure there is gold at the end of the rainbow. It's just too long a rainbow for me right now.
adoro tus videos.
It is too attractive for me to play this game, I tried on Vassal. I don't know if I played right, I play only some rounds with one character, and I stuck on the combat :) .... I order RuneBound I think it's a great great game from the tube I saw.. I don't know if you film one on RuneBound... for this game it's too long, and I am confusing on many stuff ... Great tube as usual ..... Thanks
Pierre Abou Naoum Runebound 2nd edition is one of my all-time favorite games. (I haven’t played the third edition, which is rather different.). I haven’t made a Runebound video per se-the world doesn’t need another-but I have talked about that game in many other vids. Have I done a top 5 all-around? If so it would be there as #2
PS: I totally get what you say about Magic Realm. I understand why some love it but trying to deal with those dates mechanics now is too much (for me at least)
@@GeekGamers01 out of the contents here I would like to ask if you tried " Fields of fire" ?
Pierre Abou Naoum I own Fields I’d Fire and someday want to learn how to play it. Thus far, I haven’t devoted the time necessary to do that.
@@GeekGamers01 Too long game 4 to 5 hours...
@@GeekGamers01 I replay the tubes connected to magic realm and what I realise is that I did my combat wrongly by remove from play the shit that I use in a round in as used marker until I don't have any marker to fight later .... I am just confused about the box in top of the combat sheet 'used this round'....
12:45 ... It is odd for you to say "in a strange, strange way it might play better if you played it as a conflict game."
Magic Realm was explicitly intended as a conflict game between players. There is s scoring chart where every type of action is given a point value, so the players who chase different goals can be measured against each other, and a wnner declared, even if they did completely unrelated things. The killer and the gold-finder and the explorer are all tracked on the scoring sheet, so the gold finder could "defeat" the killer just by being better at finding than than the killer was at killing.
Magic Realm was never intended to be fun for a single player. Not even intended to be fun for cooperation. Competition is baked into the game.
If you need a real life tutor, try posting in the bgg magic realm forums. Plenty of teachers have expressed interest in teaching this game. I don't know what area you are in, but if you're not too far I could even teach.
quan7umjack I was thinking I might make such a posting next Spring. Summer is really the only time I have to keep the game up to learn it.
Hey, GG!! Nice!
I really wanted to like this game, but the challenge of the steep learning curve led me to trade it.
At least you probably got something really good in the trade. :)
Lol
I think I traded for Defenders of the Realm and Ghost Stories. I still have them and break them out every now and then. 😁
This is a game which is screaming to be re-designed from the top-down including the rules and physical game pieces. Sadly legal disputes are a reality.
Dave Dogge Yeah :(