Buffy the Vampire Slayer : The Game

Before all the HeroScapeyness and such but post HeroQuest years, super gamey Gods Rob and Craig did the deed and up popped BtVS:tG(US), which is not the chemical equation for cheese.

Ye old dice of customness that these guys thrive on are here in all their cubey glory. Little vampy fangs, stakes and stuff are on fighty dice, and there's move dice and dice for the bigbad and majik dice for when you want to go all Willowy. Its like Doom with the colors, but not for what the Doom dice are for. The fight dice say things like Jab and Punch and Kick, but it doesn't mean anything different, except on would be a jab or a punch or a kick. They all do the same, but its kind of there for flavoriness. Which is cool.

So one of your gang plays the big bad du jour, and you really shouldn't play if you haven't seen that season, because of all things spoiler, like Oz being a werewolf and ... and I shouldn't have said that in case you haven't seen that season, so just make believe it didn't happen, OK?

Everyone else who isn't the person who's the bigbad gets to be the Scoobs. Willow, Oz, Xander, Buffster. This is all like, the early seasons, so you can't be sure if Willow is all mushy on Xander or Oz, but definitely no Tara or that girlgirl stuff here. You kind of make your own little story that isn't quite like the one that was on TV, well, especially because maybe everybody dies and that didn't happen on TV, at least not all at the same time.

You really kind of have to have 4 good guys, or else there's too much badness for them and that would be bad. So if you have less, someone gets to be more than one someone.

Everybody has all these roleplay-y type stats like they stepped out of HeroScape or Quest (The Hero- kind, not the WarHammer- kind, although that's the same kind, that's not the kind I meant). You get a majik level and a strength and hit points and everybody gets different kinds of cards. You can only have cards that you can have. Like Buff gets weapons and hurty things, but Willow gets all the spelly cards. Oz sometimes loses his cards because werewolves aren't big on the clothing and opposable thumbs with fine motor skill. But then he's big on the Grr and the Rah and the teeth to make up for it.

There's this round mystical dial thing in the middle of the board which shows moon phases and day and stuff, but it really is kind of all wiggy, because its daylight for like 1 dot and then all moony all the rest, and some of the moons are full, which make Oz get all grouchy. So its not like each dot on the moon phases is actually one and then the next night, but more like when the next patrol is, because sometimes patrol is in the day, but there aren't a lot of vamps during the day because of that little sunlight problem they have. There's spells and things on the dice to move the moon chart along, and if you're the vamp team, you better run indoors, but no houses unless you're invited, because vamps have this mystical politeness that they can't go places they aren't invited.

The board is a really square Sunnydale map with all the spots on it like the school and Hellmouth, which everyone really should see if they visit Sunnydale, and The Bronze, and the Mausoleums and the park and the majik shop and all the stuff like on the series, only flatter and squarer.

On a turn, you see how far you go and run around getting cards which are like weapons or friends. Friends are good and everyone should have some, even not in the game. This is where you'll find Giles and Riley and all the other people that were in the first few seasons that aren't the players. And also decks with swords, and spell books and rocket launchers and other things of big ow.

There's a few different seasons to play with different bigbads and different win lose ways and some different artifacts, which are always some whoa hey lookout type things that the good guys and the badguys each want to either rule the world in darkness or not.

So in a game you have things happen just like in the show that never happened in the show.

Like this one time - it wasn't in band camp - where Xander was in the museum and there was Angel, but he wasn't Angel, he was all rrrr with the Angelus, and Oz came in and was all grrr back at him with the fangs, and Angelus got all mean and bit Xander, but not the kind of bit to make him flip his character sheet and start hanging out at the Bronze only at night, and then Willow was running in and all like 'I've got a pool cue, stay away from my boyfriend and my other boyfriend from another season' and she dusts Angelus just poof. So its make like cool stories, just they're different stories than the ones on DVD, because if Willow dusted Angel, he would never have gotten his own series, or if he did, it would have been really boring.

The rules have pictures. And words. Together. And words from the show. The rules are good. They explain how to dust a vamp (you have to beat it up first usually) and all sorts of things, and while it won't win an Oscar or whatever it is they give for rulebookiness, its got a lot of the clear and easy.

So even though there's only a few story set ups, things get really different. Sometimes the vamps are all over and its like Spike And Dru running the town and the Scoobs all going 'where's all the stakes' and sometimes its like the Initiative is all commando and the vamps are looking in the sewers for some mystic thing of winningness before all goodness comes at them.

Its like a big old mash mix of all of the early Buff stuff, from the Master up to about the Initiative. There's fans that have made other rules and cards for later, but they're sometimes kind of not playtested and all with the wiggins. I wouldn't worry though, cuz if you're just playing for the cool storyness, this box is chock full of the ness of story.

Its a definite experience and balance it has not a lot of I don't think, but if you're there for slayerage, that it does better than anything.

Grr. Argh.

TLDR: The Gang Vs Monsters reliving Joss Whedon’s heyday.