VALHAL – Joy and Sorrow in a Viking’s Life

Have you ever come around the next morning after a rollicking party with a headache, scrambling for orientation and finding your befuddled brain completely and totally blank? If you ever experienced such an extreme yourself, you might be able to feel with the stricken heroes in this historical civilisation builder board game. Everybody else will just have to employ their imagination.  The name of the game is a clue in itself: VALHAL is all about Vikings. Real ones. The theme of VALHAL is the life and day of the historic Vikings, and their religious beliefs play an important part. But Ragnarök can wait. For now, the most important thing is being a true Viking who, after a glorious death, will then proudly stride into Asgard, with his sword in hand, and claim his place amidst the mead drinking ranks of the heroes of Valhal. This is the sole and most noble purpose of every Viking’s very existence! It is just that a combination of too much mead, and a too deeply felt anticipation of the glorious afterlife, can lead to certain unforeseen complications…

On one fateful morning, the Vikings of Fjörnheim, a fictitious island in the North, wake up with a legendary headache. Still struggling with the aftereffect of mead still coursing through their veins and some major memory gaps concerning the finer details of the previous night, they are facing Rattatöskr, messenger of the gods, who brings it to their notice that in their drunken state they “accidentally” chopped up a holy tree to feed their little camp fire. The proprietors of the tree in question, the Gods of Asgard, are not amused. At all. Without further ado they withdraw the post-mortem access authorization to Asgard and Valhal from the hung-over Norsemen. Things cannot possibly get any worse for a Viking-!

The theme of the game:

This civilization builder board game takes place in the early Viking era, which is depicted with great historical accuracy down to the very details.  You assume the responsibility of one of the Fjörnheim Jarls under whose leadership the Norsemen strive to manage, improve and further their settlements and, most importantly, perform great deeds – i.e. go a-viking and bring home loot. This is done in order to gain Glory and win back the favour of the Gods and eventually be welcomed at the doors of Asgard and admitted into Valhal after their heroic demise.

Some basic data:

  • Published by  Tetrahedron-Games 2018 (Copyright 2017)
  • Designed by  Martin Otzmann and Mario Arthur
  • Artwork by  Nele Diel
  • Plays  2 – 4 players
  • Age  10+
  • Duration of Gameplay  90 – 120 minutes
  • Setup-Time  about 12 minutes
  • Box Size  square box (23,5 x 23,5 x 6,5 cm)

Lots of fun stuff in a box:

  • 1 Season Marker, which is the central game board in the middle of which the seasons get indicated (there is even a surplus of 3 additional Season Markers in the box that can be used as replacements)
  • 4 Favour of the Gods  displays (1 per player)
  • 4 Ravenhead Tokens in the player colours, used to record the progress on the Favour of the Gods display (1 per player)
  • 7 Achievenment Tokens (grant bonus points for being first to achieve certain objectives)
  • 8 Memory Aid Tokens (with the sides ”Spring & Disabled“ und “Summer & Winter“)
  • 16 Food Tokens
  • 16 Building Tokens:  8 Wood Tokens
      8 Iron Tokens
  • 80 Coins
  • 5 game boards:  4 Viking Settlements (the Viking settlement of the player where
    they can build, train their warriors and manage their ressources)
    The Mainland (one central game boardwhere the villages and towns to be raided are laid out)
  • 72 unit cards: 28 units Nordic Warriors
      20 units Nordic Veterans (elite warriors) and
      24 Longboats (the famous Viking dragon boats)
  • 16 Buildings Cards:  4 Warehouses (improve building of ships)   
      4 Blacksmith’s (help warriors to become “veterans”)
      4 Granaries (improve the food situation in winter)
       4 Sacrificial Altars (grant ”Benevolence of the gods” cards)
  • 24 Town Cards  (from small undefended villages to strong fortified towns plus relief troops) .
  • 24 Town Cards  (from small undefended villages to strong fortified towns plus relief troops)
  • 149 Playing Cards : 50 Event Cards
      30 Benevolence of (the) Gods Cards
      30 Wrath of the Gods Cards
      15 Lesser Loot Cards
      10 Large Loot Cards
      10 Greater Loot Cards
  • 4 Battletableaus
  • 20 Markers (little wooden cubes in 3 different colours)
  • 4 red D6 Dice
  • 20 white Custom Dice (faces showing 1 to 3, with each number appearing twice)

Sounds like a huge amount of content? It certainly is. It really baffles the mind how is it possible to put out such a lot of gaming fun for such a reasonable price. It is not the sheer number of single game parts alone that is impressive: The artwork is really excellent and the production quality of the components is good. Everything is straightforward, easy to handle, and well-made.  For such a modest price (or even higher prices) we have – on other occasions – seen flimsy products with just a fraction of components such as these. So it is truly amazing and also very gratifying to see how much of a game you are getting in a box of VALHAL by comparison.

The creators themselves, however, told us they are not entirely happy with the quality of the components, especially with some of the cards, although we and our fellow gamers had been satisfied with the present production and its components. So anyone who is planning to get themselves a copy of their own: You can look forward to the upcoming re-issue of the game (soon on  kickstarter) with components made by different production companies where everything is going to be even better than it is now!

What impressed us the most about this game is the care and thoroughness that went into the way the theme has been translated into the design and the game mechanics. There is not a single aspect that has not been researched and implemented correctly in terms of cultural history: There are no anachronisms anywhere, n horned helmets or any other such popular nonsense in evidence! The creators did not simply paste a popular theme onto a game mechanism, the mechanism organically grows from the very depths and realities of the theme itself. They do take the Nordic culture of that particular era very seriously indeed. This even applies to such detail as the colour scheme of the game and its components which moves within the scope of exclusively such pigments that would actually have been available at the time of the Vikigs. Wow! That’s what we call dedication! If you are expecting extravagant fantasy Vikings sprung from a comic strip, you won’t find any of those here. But you are not giong to miss them either. VALHAL is a novel and crisp gaming experience with a sound mixture of rules, strategies and luck – just like real life. If, however, you are genuinely into the historic Viking people, you will in fact experience some of their real life while enjoying a game of VALHAL If you have none such expectations and simply want to play an interesting board game, VALHAL is for you, too.

The settlements:

There are four identical settlements. This settlement is the actual playing board for each player, where the destiny of the villagers decides; the victory points generated here are counted on the Favour of the Gods display. In the centre of each settlement there is the Jarl’s longhouse; this is where you place your resources. You collect your (unspent) coins, food tokens and building tokens (wood, iron). The number of food tokens in limited to four: Prior to the invention of canned food and freezers, you just could not store an unlimited food supply to last you all year. So in real Viking life, resources did actually run scarce at times…

In your settlement you have a shipbuilder; in that spot you are able to construct your dragon boats. You have a training ground where you may train farmers to become brave seafarers and man your ships, and a rune stone where you may sacrifice gold or glory (victory points) to be granted a favour of the gods. But be warned – gods are not bound to any profane rules. The favours they will grant are not always beneficial to mortals…

Also, each settlement has building sites for additional buildings – a warehouse, a granary and a blacksmith – as well as an (already existing) armoury for the use of which, however, you need a blacksmith, because it requires a blacksmith to adequately equip simple sailors with the necessary means to become seasoned veteran warriors. That makes a lot of sense.

Your objective is to finish your building as soon as possible. In order to do this, you must first place a coin on the building site and provide food for the settlement. (Workers need to eat.) Using resources can enable you to start or speed up the building process even without any food tokens. When finished, buildings allow you to build ships faster and with fewer resources, to train up and equip warriors or also to have more food during the long winter (better storage conditions).

How to play:

Each game consists of several rounds which take place during the three (!) seasons (summer, winter and spring). At the start of the first round, each player owns one longboat, one unit Nordic warriors manning it, one unit food, two units iron (represented by the two tokens) and three coins.

It starts with a “Vikingfahrt“:

You can only go on a Vikingfahrt (Viking sea raid) in summer. Therefore, the game starts in summer, and you begin by placing some (unfortified) villages on the mainland; their number is determined following the number of players present. And off you go!

The villages you aim for are easy prey – or not: There are small unprotected hamlets, but also big, heavily fortified cities that put up some fierce resistance with the help of relief troops in a second wave of defense. You are facing the dilemma that the easy targets guarantee some booty and a safe return of ship and men, but the booty you bring home may be rather unimpressive. Those rich fortified cities, on the other hand, contain a heap of real riches to be gleaned, and often some noble offspring into the bargain that can earn you a handsome ransom, but all this comes at great risk.

One thing is for certain: If you opt for a risk-free life bullying some conveniently harmless farmers into giving up the little they have,  you and your settlement will yourself end up having little, no heroic ballads are sung in your praise and the gates of Valhal will forever stay shut. So when you are planning ahead where to risk a sea raid, you should think and re-think before you take action.

You pick out one of the places laid out on the mainland that you want to raid and pillage and chose the longboat and unit of warriors you want to employ for the task. The next step is the actual fight. A successfully pillaged village or city is removed from the mainland and you bag all the loot that is stated on its card: gold, resources like food, wood or iron, ransom for hostages…

That having been done, the next player starts the next raid on the respective target. This continues until all the places on the mainland have been raided. 

How you fight:

If a ship has more than one unit of warriors on board, you have to first determine which of them is going to attack first.  The attack bonuses do add up, but not the life points. All attack bonuses are used in battle, but only the unit in front takes the damage. If the attacking unit in front loses all life points and die, the remaining unit will be next to attack, but of course there are no more bonuses to add up. This gives you the impression you are dealing with real human beings who are acting together in small groups, though you do not experience them as different individuals. However, you do perceive them in a totally different way than you would if you played “unit“ as a mere abstract.

Cities have their life points, too, and they can either put up a weak or a very strong defence.  An attempted raid cannot only fail, it can actually end in disaster!  This is a somewhat sobering view of the raiding seafarers.  What they do is depicted with all the dangers and uncertainties, the risk of paying for some lousy loot with the death of crew members, or even never returning home but sleeping with the fishes forever.

The good news: If your unit of warriors „die“, i.e. lose all their life points, they are not dead yet, but wounded to such an extent that their number of life points will be considerably lower in the next fight. The bad news: The wounded warriors are, of course, also weaker now. If the unit lose all their life points a second time, they are then considered dead and are removed from game. If the ship is no longer manned because your first and also second unit of warriors are truly dead, it is removed from the game. (It is lost to you.) This system also adds a lot to the realism of the gameplay.

The clear and well-structured combat system is easy to grasp and plays smoothly. How successful you are is determined by your attacking strength and choosing your targets wisely, but the dice add a random element of luck. The result of this combination convincingly simulates the actual hazards of a “Vikingfahrt”: However well you prepare, in reality you simply cannot achieve a total control on events and circumstances! To influence the probabilities in your own favour and prevent the worst from happening, all you can do is to plan ahead as well as you can and think your decisions through.  The element of luck adds a lot of suspense to the gameplay, but it also helps you maintain the hope that next time fortune will smile at you again, even while you are failing.

And there is more good news: If at any point a Jarl finds himself without any ship or men, his settlement will immediately provide a new ship and unit of warriors! It rarely ever happens that your settlement has to throw you that lifeline, but it makes certain that all players can always continue to have fun together and game on. When all is said, this is what it’s all about, even in a most definitely non-cooperative game. We really like this simple solution because it excludes nobody and there is no interrution in the flow of the game.

This happens during winter and spring:

After your “Vikingfahrt“ you will – hopefully – have all the resources necessary to prepare for the coming summer and to further develop your settlement.

You place food tokens on the seasons on your settlement. Food tokens can be replaced by coins; you “buy” food you do not have. Next you need to hire more men, train up your already existing units to become veterans, and of course you have to build things. This is important because the buildings give you certain advantages once they are finished. It is essential to have a larger number of reliable ships, too, and also more warriors manning them, because all those villages that are easy prey will soon be gone (due to certain activities of certain seafarers from way up north). The cities you will be trying to raid next will not be overcome by a handful of men in a glorified rowing boat.  In fact, this is a very busy and fast-paced phase in VALHAL .

The zeal you invest in your own village is not unlke the joyous ecxitement you would feel when packing your bags for a world trip. Your setttlement must survive the long winter; the journeys of the summer ust be well prepared for so that the men and boats will return safely and laden with treasures – what could be more important? Nothing, absolutely nothing of what happens here will be without consequence. In fact, this is a very busy and fast-paced phase in VALHAL

How to win – or lose:

You win by collecting the most victory points and thus being the first to reach the open gates of Asgard on the Favor of the Gods display.

The gaming experience viewed from the inside:

We tested VALHAL several times at our Dice & Mystics game nights: People who come to us expect to spend a nice, relaxing and entertaining time with good board games. Such guests only sit down at the table when the new game looks attractive and promises a great, varied gaming experience.

VALHAL immediately passes the visual test: As soon as the box is opened, there is a lot of interest. The artwork is appealing to all, and especially to some outspoken fans of the Viking culture, who admire the great care taken in the game design. They visibly enjoy the fact that the bold seafarers of the North, who so fascinate them, are not just props and decoration. During the following game rounds we constantly hear comments and observations about the life of the real Norsemen, their characteristics and their daily lives; the game arouses interest and furthers understanding. 

There is no shortage of players. Setup takes a little time. Good things will take a while. Patiently and full of anticipation we endeavor to learn the rules for the impressive amout of components. What appeared a little complicated at first soon turns out to be quite easy to grasp. In the first round, the rules are still in the foreground, but everything works smoothly and effortlessly: We sit down, start playing, and have fun.

The first “Vikingfahrt“ is quite easily accomplished, although success is by no means guaranteed.  In our very first trial round, all men and ships return successfully. The Jarls are happy. The first building projects commence in winter, in spring one of the settlements is proud to have their own blacksmith.  When the second much more difficult  “Vikingfahrt“ is in progress,  the rules  are crystal clear and the combat system does not need to be explained anymore.

The following summer it gets obvious that the first raid with the small easy-to-pillage villages had actually been some kind of tutorial. This is neat. It feels more natural to go through the steep learning curve within the actual gameplay rather than having to complete a separate practise session before. (In later game rounds, for a new gamer to be able to join in, a quic briefing about the bare essentials proves sufficient, everything else can be learned “on the fly”. Learning by Doing actually worked just fine!)

As the game proceeds, it turns out that it is not so easy to complete your buildings quickly enough and take advantage of them, if you had previously chosen to follow the less profitable but safer path. Two things become very evident. First, VALHAL rewards taking risks, not choosing the safest way. Second, the smallest mistake in your planning is going to mercilessly lead to serious consequences. That does make sense: The living conditions in the Viking age allowed no mistakes. So you have to be pretty alert and quick-witted. If you miscalculate your sea raids or fail to provide for he long winter or bring home too much of the wrong loot, you will have serious problems at hand – and there go your chances to become the most successful and most renowned settlement in all Fjörnheim. Winners as well as losers – all our gamers are enjoying themselves and want to play again as soon as possible.

At the following game nights and with the same paricpants, the gameplay is even more balanced. Everybody knows how it goes (or rather how Rattatöskr scuttles). Nonody is careless enough to naively attack the most harmless hamlet; all building activities, resource management and storage projects are planned more carefully and with better foresight; more ships and crews go a-viking, the game becomes more eventful, faster and more fluent, and whoever is going to win this time ramains open until he game is finished.

In the end, everybody applauds the winner, but although there is no envy among the players, you can read it in their faces – resolutions are being made to do everything differently and better the next time, all in order to win the favor of the gods. That’s the way it is meant to be!

Final thoughts:

If it was not for this little horned guy,  we might have taken a little longer to catch our attention, but a glance round the corner and there he was, his little keen eyes blinking up at us from his place on the corner of the table – and we stood spellbound! We were captivated on the spot!

This little fellow is the messenger of the Gods (the Asen), who came scuttling down the trunk of the world ash Yggdrasil all the way down to our hung-over Vikings to deliver the dire message of the angry management. This unusually attractive figurine is not needed for the game itself, but renouncing him? No Viking way!

The messenger of the gods, a finely sculpted resin figure, and the attractive leather coasters with their beautiful ornaments are the extras that come with the special edition.  But even without them the game VALHAL is a visual treat.

VALHAL is more than playable eye candy, it also has substance. It combines original, “organic” game mechanics with a historically correct and realistic representation of a popular theme. You can see very clearly what a huge amount of true passion and great care has been invested in the creation of this game. There is so much to do and experience, and although it is played taking turns, there is no downtime that deserves the name. 

The Viking theme so convincingly portrayed by Nele Diehl is not an illustration, it becomes tangible and alive. That is what makes VALHAL so special. Even the steep learning curve at the beginning can be explained by the logical and convincing derivation of the rules from the topic itself.

The playing time given by the publisher is a realistic estimate, as demonstrated on several game nights. This makes VALHAL an interesting game not only for plays at home but also for a game club. Several games one after the other, even with partial change of players, are easily possible.

VALHAL appeals to different types of gamers, is entertaining, plays differently each time and offers excellent value for money for a good and unusual game with good production quality. Its moderate length makes it suitable for adults, but it is easy enough to learn to be accessible to older children.

To sum up:

VALHAL has convinced us:  It’s great funthroughout! What more can you possibly want? We are glad that we discovered this game which now enriches our collection. „You should bring it to the table more often“, we’re being told, und there are questions concerning the upcoming kickstarter…

(The Dice & Mystics thank the publisher Tetrahedon Games for the free copy of their game.)

By: Martina Frohme; Dice & Mystics

Loving The Others

Some people dig horror themes, others don’t. Tastes differ, and that is a good thing.

I for my part quite like “horror” games. Next to fantasy and sci-fi, the horror theme is one of my favourites. However, I can understand that some gamers find no joy in this genre or maybe are o.k. with a mild horror theme but think that some of the games currently available go a step too far. They find themselves unable and unwilling to play because they find the aspect of gruesome minis, gory standees and blood splattered boards unpleasant. After all, gaming is meant to be fun, and not experiencing any fun looking at death, decay and degeneration is a very healthy reaction. Attempting to force people into it, blackmailing them with the prospect of continued ridicule for being wimpy, is inacceptable.

So, is having fun with horror games an unhealthy thing? It’s… complicated.

I enjoy games with a supernatural and fantasy theme where you get to encounter ghosts, mythological characters and fabulous beasts or figures based e. g. on the art of H. P. Lovecraft. I would wear a Cthulhu T-shirt if it was given to me. I would not necessarily buy one. “Flavour” is, well, not everything, but it contributes a great deal to the way you experience your gameplay. There are story driven games as well as games with good back stories, often provided in the rule book as an intro, which do not unfold in the actual gameplay but serve to generate a certain mood and attitude that influences you in a significant way.

I enjoy games that draw their fascination from e. g. a gas-lit 19th century setting that depicts a past where science was looked at askance and the line between empirical facts, folklore and imagination was still thin. Those games add a historical touch to the experience when you learn about ideas that distinguish our 21st century mind-sets from those of our forebears.

And, yes, there are horror games I would not touch because they concentrate too much on the theme for the theme’s sake, without a good enough story to back up what is happening on the board. They remind me of movies where a weak plot is a mere excuse for adding one special effect on top of the other.

Games like e.g. The Others, they are a very different matter. In The Others you take a stand against the Deadly Sins, presented to you in the form of truly abhorrent and disgusting artwork of the highest artistic standard. No squinting sideways here: A single glance – and you are going to have the picture imprinted in your memory forever. And there are sickening mutants, too, corrupted by the influence of sheer evil.  The point is, you are meant to not like them. You are actually meant to find them as off-putting and hateful as possible.

And this is something I truly like about The Others: Evil is in no way romanticized. You can fall for the attraction of a vampire, you can feel a morbid sympathy for werewolves and even identify with your Joe Average turned zombie, but in my opinion it is humanly impossible to feel anything but disgust and opposition towards those incorporations of evil that are depicted in The Others. And this is how it should be.  Evil is put in its place. Its true nature is exposed where it lifts its ugly head. The evil that enters or emanates from a tainted human being is shown as something that takes away or at least significantly diminishes his or her humanity.

As an aside and between the lines: For any artist it hast to be an enormous challenge to create a piece of work that people both instinctively abhor for its looks and its meaning and at the same time enjoy and admire for its  artistic quality. This alone is enough to make The Others unique in my eyes. But there is more.

Some hero characters would easily qualify as abominations in any other game. There are e.g. the huge horned pale hulk called Thorley and his genetic half- sister Rose who are not pretty by any conventional standards, or by any standard, really. Rose’s tentacles that grow from her elbows are enough for me to get squeamish at, and even more so when they develop heads and a life and will of their own. It is the “Other” part of her genes, but Rose may use their deadliness as her signature weapon. Other characters add a distorted psyche to their physical abnormality.

Wanting to play these characters and identifying with them is not so easy. People reject the game because they are opposed to playing “monsters” and feel the line between good and evil is too blurry. They would rather fight them than play and therefore to some extent identify with them. And that much is true: You shudder at the thought of having them next to you, but this has to be seen in relation and contrast to the urge to shut your eyes and hide in the presence of a Sin. The point is that, however you feel about them, they are just about human enough to accept them standing next to you and fighting side by side with humanity.

At this point, things get philosophical.

Those “monsters” you can play as heroes in the games are precious creations. It is easy to overlook their true quality when you put the game on the table, go through the mechanics and skim the data on the character cards.

It is sad that most people cannot enjoy the wonderful back stories that have been written to illustrate the game: The kickstarter edition comes with an art book that gives you a detailed impression of the whole concept of the game The Others and its creatures, containing narratives that better acquaint you with your playable characters, especially the not quite human ones. I confess I had my issues with them, too, at first. But they are creative inventions way, way beyond plastic and life points.

The first thing you learn is: Their DNA is part human, part the DNA of the Others. They are physically corrupted to a point where players feel a strong reservation towards taking them up. They are no heroes like Superman, even if they have super-human powers like Thorley’s super strength or Rose’s ability to slow down time while moving. They were genetically engineered by the agents of evil to open the gates for the Others, but they fled because they instinctively shrank back from evil when they first saw it. They helped each other escape and are extremely protective towards each other and towards anyone who is kind to them, to a point of self-sacrifice. They came to life physically mature, but otherwise they are basically still children just entering adolescence, grappling with new unfelt emotions, trying to make sense of the world of adults and discovering their own powers and abilities. They are, literally, suffering from their respective conditions much in the way the Incredible Hulk does. They have human weaknesses too: Thorley needs reading glasses. For reading.

They identify with their human heritage and feel disgust at the Others just like the next guy. They like soap opera, enjoy fish and chunky chips, play board games  – Thorley hast a passion for chess! – and love to go to the pub because it is a place where they can have some social contact.  (You did not think they do it for the beer and the booze, did you? Remember, they are practically children.) They have a deep yearning for a normal life of which they have but a sketchy idea derived from TV shows they picked up on the run. They suffer from being different and try to hide their physical otherness under hoods or long sleeves to blend in and also not to cause discomfort to or frighten any humans.

Having witnessed the devastation the Others wreaked on the small town Haven, Thorley and Rose cannot help but feel a deep compassion towards those “poor humans” and feel compelled to join up with any human resistance they might be able to find. They have a common enemy, and they feel as drawn to the weaker humans as they are repelled by the Others. It is a rational, “enlightened” reaction to their experience of corruption, violence and destruction that expresses nothing different than philosopher Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative. To them, stopping the Others and protecting humanity becomes an end in itself.

I quote Wikipedia: “According to Kant, human beings occupy a special place in creation, and morality can be summed up in an imperative, or ultimate commandment of reason, from which all duties and obligations derive. He defined an imperative as any proposition declaring a certain action (or inaction) to be necessary.” You could say this makes Thorley and his sister all human by choice, if not by nature: For them, siding with the Others is not even an option, because to them evil and destruction does not make any sense. They act according to Kant’s often quoted first maxim: “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.” The fact that they are ready to risk their own existence in the process shows the abstractness and purity of their motive which is surprising in a “universe” that is nothing more than a board game. This does not turn them into model images of saints: They simply dislike being used and discarded like mere tools, and they want to be treated as individuals with a will and a conscience of their own. Still, the moral judgement holds: They are, by most definitions, the good (as humans go) guys.

Did the creators think of Kant? Did they want to teach us philosophy and hide a lesson in a board game? Of course not! (Although I would not put it entirely past them.) But they exist in a cultural context where, long after Kant and his contemporaries, the philosophy of enlightenment is still present and active.  Apart from any other considerations, this is rather reassuring.

It is time to re-phrase an earlier statement: Wanting to play these characters and identifying with them is not easy but an exercise in tolerance. You learn to tolerate the characters, disregarding their ancestry and their appearance and accept them, limits and imperfections and all, for their thoughts and actions. We become more human by being more humane.

Now, wait a moment, you say, what is this all about? They are not real persons. They are just playable characters in a board game. But then, why did you have inhibitions when it came to playing them? Because you do identify with your playable character.

You do not want to be a monster in a game where monstrosity is taken so seriously. You want to be truly human, and this, intentionally or not, is the concept behind those “monstrous” half human characters. You are aware of the potential of evil and corruption your character is tainted with. In real life you also are dealing with something inside yourself that e.g. in the terminology of Christian religion is called “original sin”, or in German “Erbsünde” (which translates as “hereditary sin”), something that is part of your very nature which you have to face and to overcome, in order to become whatever your belief or philosophy says you truly ought to be.

The game The Others also shows you how hard it is to prevail, how tempting it is to give in to hopelessness or to choose an easier path and submit to corruption. It shows you that decisions that matter are not so simple and that, if you were expected to always be perfect and pure to be redeemed, and there was no tolerance of weakness and no forgiveness – to stay within Christian terminology – you would not stand a chance.

However – being a Sin player in The Others is actually a rather taxing experience and not everybody’s cup of tea because you cannot, and do not want to identify with one of the Sins. It is certainly not a game for any game group. As a Sin player you have to strictly follow the rule book and cannot allow yourself to simply lean back and enjoy, and you have to keep a healthy distance to your Sin character. There is a thin line that is hard not to cross.  Being a Sin player is a step that I, personally, would not be willing to take, but somebody in your game group will have to, and this is the main issue why I can still very well understand why somebody would not want to play The Others and finds no joy in taking part at all.