It's an online tabletop RPG facilitator. And I think you can configure it for a variety of games,

A friend of mine did that with the Runequest system. Came up with the greatest scenarios, including an Indiana Jones-type setting.

And agreed that Kingmaker has its issues, though I'd call it stalemate rather than balance. Grab an heir, figure out your base, and stay there.

Rail Baron is loads of fun. And inspiration for the exchange:

Player: Oh, no. I have to go to Miami.
Owner of Seaboard Airline: No. You mean MY-ami.

The only political board game I ever really played was Campaign Trail, which was from -- maybe Game Designers' Workshop? Great job of pulling the elements of a political campaign while allowing them to be combined in the most unlikely ways. (Tagline from that one: You can always get to Chicago.)

LOTR Risk is an AWESOME game. Great variation on the basic Risk game.

Another topic: Rumors of WOTC's "fair use" rules: [link]

So after two years of promising they would not being poisoning the waters, WotC is going to do exactly that. Nice.

On the subject of long board games, I have several favorites that I have not played in so very, very long.

First and foremost is Civilization. I miss that game SO MUCH. And I no longer have a copy. I have every now and again found copies of Civ and CivII (an expansion game) on Ebay for about $60, but always when I couldn't actually afford it.

It's a fun, fun, fun game, and very similar to the Sid Myer video game. In fact, there's a board game version of the Sid Myer game, but I've never played it, so I don't know too much about it.

Anyway, in the original board game, you play one of the early human cultures -- Egyptian, Assyrian, Roman, Greek (among others that I forget). The playing board consists of a map of Europe, Northern Africa, and the nearer parts of Asia and Asia Minor. There is also a timeline that starts at the very dawn of civilization and moves in turns, through various epochs of human history -- Early Stone Age, Late Stone Age, Early Bronze Age, and so on...

Each turn, your people are fruitful and multiply (whether you like it or not, usually not). Then you have the opportunity to move some of your TOO MANY MOUTHS TO FEED to nearby territories in the hopes of (temporarily) relieving the TO MANY MOUTHS TO FEED problem. You also collect a small hand of trade good cards to trade with other players, in the hopes of collecting sets. Once you collected a certain number of sets, you could trade them in to gain Civilization cards.

The Civilization cards were things like Writing, or Granary, or Mysticism, or Charioteering (okay, I really don't remember what a lot of those were, but they ranged across a variety of subjects). All of these were ways to increase your civilization, and generally try to help solve the TOO MANY MOUTHS TO FEED problem. There were occasionally riots and natural disasters and other things like that, that while they would set you back in the game, would also alleviate the TOO MANY MOUTHS TO FEED problem. For a little while.

Also, there were various requirements (in the form of mandatory Civilization card possession) in order to enter a new epoch, so sooner or later, everyone bounced off a particular epoch, and lagged behind.

The game ended at the Iron Age or some such. It was possible to be taken out of the game completely. Then, if there was a civil war in somebody else's civilization later, you could reenter the game by taking over her splinter faction.

Man, I miss that game.

Then there's this game I mentioned called Republic of Rome. It's a lot of fun, too. Each player plays a faction of early Roman Republic political families, with between three, four and five cards, representing the individual families. And these are historic families, like the Julii, the Fulvii, the Cornelii, the Sulpicii, the Aurelii, and so on.

Each turn, you start by drawing a mortality chit, to possibly kill one family scion. Then each player takes turn collecting money and taxes (a big part of the game is generating revenue to pay for the things you want to do). Then, after you've taken a series of action to increase your influence, you check the level of unrest among the people.

Once all that is done each turn, the real meat and fun of the game begins. One family representative is elected Consul of the Senate for the year, and the session is open. It is at this point that the game becomes very political, as you try and win offices and increase your prestige, avoid censure, pass land bills to appease the people, assign governorships to various people (sometimes with their blessing, sometimes against their will), and otherwise try to steer the ship of early Roman State.

This is far trickier than is sounds, because not only are there so many factors working against you (Carthage, for example), the object of the game is for one (continued...)

( continues...) of your family scions to become First Man in Rome (elected Consul for Life), and what's best for you to achieve that, and what is best for the Roman ship of State are pretty much always at cross purposes.

This game is also divided into epochs -- Early, Middle, and Late Republic. The Early Republic is very difficult to play, because Rome is always on the verge of succumbing to war (if you ever have four or more active wars at the end of a turn, game over, everybody loses). The Middle Republic period is the most fun to play, I think, as the world settles down a bit, and you can spend most of your time being political in the Senate. The Late Republic becomes a little too political, as Rome now wants to become an Empire, which adds some interesting destructive forces of its own.

Anyway, I have babbled over long, and need to get ready for work.

WHEW!

LOTR Risk is an AWESOME game. Great variation on the basic Risk game.

I've only ever played it with 3, which is a bit uneven. But yeah, I think it mitigates the main problems with the original Risk.

Then there's this game I mentioned called Republic of Rome. It's a lot of fun, too. Each player plays a faction of early Roman Republic political families, with between three, four and five cards, representing the individual families. And these are historic families, like the Julii, the Fulvii, the Cornelii, the Sulpicii, the Aurelii, and so on.

Ooh, that sounds like fun. Except I have a feeling I'd find it really hard to put the HBO versions of everyone out of my head.

I also have been itching a little to play Cosmic Encounter, which I have, and Talisman, which Drew has (a full set, no less).

My Cosmic is a full set of West End's Cosmic and More Cosmic.

I had a friend back in Michigan who once had a full set of Eon Cosmic, including the 9th expansion set with the Aristocrat power. It's now long gone, and Eon sets are collectors items that only leave their owner's hands for obscene sums of money.

Republic of Rome (the Middle Republic game) is SO MUCH FUN, Jess. And actually, though I haven't seen any of it, the HBO series is probably good to keep in mind while playing. I played it with a lot of fans of Roman history, and we were always discussing and inventing juicy details about what was going on.

Civ was fun too. They are both Block Out A Whole Day games, though.

Yeah, I'm really itching to play a big game of Talisman too.

I spent many late nights playing Civilization and Talisman. I vaguely remember Cosmic Encounter -- isn't that one where you play one of a number of alien races, each of which has special (and often very off-center) powers?

I was very good at Empires of the Middle Ages, which was a conquer-Europe-during-the-Middle-Ages game. Not least because the game was set up so your empire had natural language and, to a lesser extent, religious limits. I played then with a very attack-minded group. So they'd develop large empires and spend the rest of the game losing and regaining. While I'd stop at my natural limits and have a smaller, but more cohesive and prosperous, empire.

where's the love for Word Sandwich?

I think is was Sean who mentioned it earlier- I have indeed played the Order Of The Stick game. I found it very similar to Munchkin but more fun as it incorporates the personalities of the comic-strip denizens into the play of the game.

I also have spent many hours in love with Arkham Horror . Though I have found the denoument to be frustrating it always leaves me wanting to play some more.