Podcast - Aye, Dark Overlord!

Dark James President the IIIrd (pronounced "ayarrd!") ran the card game Aye, Dark Overlord! for a few of us and was kind enough to let me record it. The game started out with us trying valiantly to stick to the rules, but quickly devolved into hilarious chaos.

Mostly, I blame the fact that the "dream grass" card was played so early. In the end, the game could have been about the antics of a trio of goblins, or the hallucinations of my squeaky little Fizzwidget. Fizz had the best intentions, but absolutely no sense of self-preservation. Was the overlord's cat melted to slime or was Fizz just snorting dewormer cut with dandruff powder? We may never know.



I assure you: we were all stone cold sober for this podcast, but there are swaths where we couldn't talk because we were laughing so hard. James has a great booming overlord voice, which really made the game for me. Unfortunately, I wound up cutting the instructions because they were impossible to hear over the card shuffling (lesson learned for next time). The short version is that there are cards that you use for plot fodder, those used for shifting blame, and the overlord gets "withering glare" cards - three strikes and you're out.

But after ten minutes, we were barely reading the cards, and the formal rules for drawing more had gone out the window. Impressively, the game mechanics are simple enough that you can let them get out of the way and just tell stories, if you have the momentum. It seems like the full rules set could be handy for more timid players.

Overall, the game was amazingly fun, and far more coherent than most of the games of Baron Münchhausen I've played (probably because we were stone cold sober). Aye, Dark Overlord is the type of game where you'd want to keep a running quote list, but the game moves too quickly, which is one reason I'm glad I just recorded the whole thing. We all had a great time playing, and I hope you all enjoy it. Thanks again to fellow gamers: James, Brittany, and Brannen.

Now I really want to play a game of Kobolds Ate My Baby.