HOAX
Derek P Long
but I have always been interested in finding out more about it. Does anyone
know anything about it? Best of all, could anyone mail me a copy of the rules
by any chance? I'd be really grateful for anything anyone can tell me.
Derek
Dave Dubin
: I know that this an old game and has been out of print for some time,
: but I have always been interested in finding out more about it. Does anyone
: know anything about it? Best of all, could anyone mail me a copy of the rule
Hoax, the Game of Imposters was published in 1981 by Eon Games, the company
that brought us Cosmic Encounter, Borderlands, Darkover, Runes, and Quirks.
Hoax was designed by Bill Eberle, Ned Horn, Jack Kittredge, and Peter Olotka.
The game plays in under 30 minutes (sometimes under six minutes).
I'm pretty sure I remember a Hoax thread on here fairly recently: people were
talking about Hoax/CE combinations. Maybe that thread was on r.g.b.ce?
Dave
Kevin J. Maroney
>: Hoax was designed by Bill Eberle, Ned Horn, Jack Kittredge,
>: and Peter Olotka.
>: The game plays in under 30 minutes (sometimes under six minutes).
>
>Eon was a great company that produced neat, fun, simple games. I was very
>sad to see them go under. Does anybody know what happened to the Eon guys?
>Did they go on to work as designers for other companies?
All of the members of Future Pastimes are gainfully employed, but to
the best of my knowledge none of them are actively involved in game
design right now. I think that Peter Olatka is doing something like
being a patent attorney. I'll ask around.
There is a new Cosmic Encounter expansion coming out this year from
Mayfair, but I don't know if the Future Pastimes people are involved.
Doug Kaufman, who worked with some of the FP people while he was at
West End games (I think he did development work on FP's _Star Trek:
The Enterprise 4 Encounter_, a surprisingly good game that no one but
me ever seems to have played) is working for AOL's gaming department.
--
Kevin Maroney | Crossover Technologies | ke...@crossover.com
If they keep you asking the wrong questions, they don't have
to worry about the answers. --Thomas Pynchon
Kevin J. Maroney
>And, for followers of other recent threads, this is probably a "3 minute
>explanation" game but I'm not familiar enough with the rules to give the
>best explanation.
I would say it isn't. The rules take longer to explain than a game
often does, if the players really want to know how the game is played.
Of course, it plays so quickly that you can get in five or six games
in the first session and work out all the complications.
Steve Hutton
: Hoax, the Game of Imposters was published in 1981 by Eon Games, the company
: that brought us Cosmic Encounter, Borderlands, Darkover, Runes, and Quirks.
Brian Bankler
The wizard is too powerful. If I get the wizard card, I can
just keep saying "I'm the Wizard...I'm immune." Pretty soon everyone
is saying it, until people just a) get peeved and challenge...
the real wizard then wins, simply because he got the wizard card.
Or b) nobody can do anything until they slowly build up money to
buy stuff with.
Brian
--
/-----------------------------------------------------------\
| Brian Bankler | Based in the Swedish part of |
| ban...@rtp.ericsson.se | North Carolina |
|-----------------------------------------------------------|
| Ericsson wants my opinions, but isn't willing to admit it.|
\-----------------------------------------------------------/
Steve Hutton
: Has anyone had the following problem with HOAX?
: The wizard is too powerful. If I get the wizard card, I can
: just keep saying "I'm the Wizard...I'm immune." Pretty soon everyone
: is saying it, until people just a) get peeved and challenge...
: the real wizard then wins, simply because he got the wizard card.
: Or b) nobody can do anything until they slowly build up money to
: buy stuff with.
In my experience, this is somewhat self-balancing. If you use the wizard
too often, people will gang up on you, using their cashed-in sets to get
information from you rather than from the other players. Also note that
this has nothing (or little) to do with which card you actually have. Every
player can pretend to be the wizard.
Kevin J. Maroney
>I know of one game they did for another company: Avalon Hill's DUNE, in my
>opinion the best boardgame ever made.
Future Pastimes, the collective name for Peter Olatka, Bill Eberle,
Jack Kitteridge, and sometimes Ned Horn or Doug Kaufman, designed a
total of eight games, six published by Eon (their own company) and two
by other producers:
COSMIC ENCOUNTER (and its nine expansion sets)
DARKOVER
DUNE (and its two expansions, THE DUEL and SPICE HARVEST), all
published by Avalon Hill
QUIRKS (and its two expansions)
RUNES
HOAX
BORDERLANDS (and its two expansions)
and
STAR TREK: THE ENTERPRISE (4) ENCOUNTER, published by West End
There was a computer adaptation of BORDERLANDS (without expansions, I
believe) entitled LORDS OF CONQUEST, which used the same mechanics but
provided twenty alternate boards.
The Mayfair COSMIC ENCOUNTER and MORE COSMIC ENCOUNTER do include
material that was not in the Eon edition, including new alien powers,
edicts, and a new set of flares. I don't know how much involvement
Future Pastimes had in the new material.
rudi...@utdallas.edu
> Brian Bankler (ban...@rtp.ericsson.se) wrote:
> : The wizard is too powerful. If I get the wizard card, I can
> : just keep saying "I'm the Wizard...I'm immune." Pretty soon everyone
> : is saying it, until people just a) get peeved and challenge...
> : the real wizard then wins, simply because he got the wizard card.
> : Or b) nobody can do anything until they slowly build up money to
> : buy stuff with.
> In my experience, this is somewhat self-balancing. If you use the wizard
> too often, people will gang up on you, using their cashed-in sets to get
> information from you rather than from the other players. Also note that
> this has nothing (or little) to do with which card you actually have. Every
> player can pretend to be the wizard.
Yes, but if you aren't the wizard, you'll eventually be challenged and
have to stop. If you *are* the wizards, that challenge wins the game for
you.
He's right, the wizard is awfully powerful. Early on, you have to decide
if you believe somebody really *is* the wizard, because the defense, if
you can determine who the wizard is, is an individual challenge, accusing
him of being the wizard, and thereby knocking him out of the game, when
he was expecting to coast to an easy win.
This is a dangerous move -- if you're wrong, *you* are out of the game.
But you need to do it often enough (it doesn't take much) to keep the
wizard from flaunting his immunity. That need to keep a low profile is
what keeps his immunity from having to pay from imbalancing the game, *but
only if you do it. The wizard has that automatic advantage, and you have
to find a way to balance it with an equally powerful risk.
It's been my experience that the people who don't think it's a deep
strategy game are not using, or misusing, individual challenges.
Two points on doing it:
Always spend down your treasury as much as possible before doing an
individual challenge. Don't risk death with tokens on hand that could
have provided the information to save your life.
Pick a moment when his tokens are useful to you. (A full set, or
completing your partial set.)
You take no risk if you can convince somebody else to do it --
You (having concluded that X is either the Wizard or the King): Do you
suppose he's the Wizard?
Z: Yeah, I think so.
You: Don't tell me, tell him.
Z. Good point. X, I challenge you. (triumphantly) You're the Wizard!
X (triumphantly): No, I'm not. (Z is out of the game.)
You (triumphantly): X, I challenge you. You're the King!
(He is, so he is out of the game. You win.)
Z (petulantly): You set me up for that!
You: (insert your favorite patronizing phrase here.)
Like all Eon products, it has simplistic mechanics, allowing deep
strategy, as sonn as you realize that it's not a mechanics game, but a
psychological bluffing and mystery game. Once I lay back, watched
carefully, and finally picked up the Challenge deck and individually
challenged every other person in the game, correctly, one after the
other. That's Hoax strategy at its best (or me at my luckiest).
Jay Rudin
Engelstein
if you are playing with people who think. If you play one way when you
have the wizard card and one when you don't then right off the bat someone
will challenge you and you'll be out. If play the same way with or without
the card then all the players will follow the same strategy and it becomes
a matter of breaking through poker faces.
Having played hundreds of games I have to say that it is terrific and
inherently balanced.
- Geoff Engelstein
Daniel Blum
> hut...@waterloo.hp.com (Steve Hutton) wrote:
> >: Hoax was designed by Bill Eberle, Ned Horn, Jack Kittredge,
> >: and Peter Olotka.
> >: The game plays in under 30 minutes (sometimes under six minutes).
> >
> >Eon was a great company that produced neat, fun, simple games. I was very
> >sad to see them go under. Does anybody know what happened to the Eon guys?
> >Did they go on to work as designers for other companies?
> All of the members of Future Pastimes are gainfully employed, but to
> the best of my knowledge none of them are actively involved in game
> design right now. I think that Peter Olatka is doing something like
> being a patent attorney. I'll ask around.
> There is a new Cosmic Encounter expansion coming out this year from
> Mayfair, but I don't know if the Future Pastimes people are involved.
> Doug Kaufman, who worked with some of the FP people while he was at
> West End games (I think he did development work on FP's _Star Trek:
> The Enterprise 4 Encounter_, a surprisingly good game that no one but
> me ever seems to have played) is working for AOL's gaming department.
I like Enterprise Encounter - my family used to play it all the time.
I know Frank Branham likes it as well (he posted something about it on
the Game Report web site). There must be a fair number of people who like
it, actually, as it's pretty hard to find a copy (either that or the
print run was extremely small). My only complaint is that the battle rules
were hard to interpret.
> --
> Kevin Maroney | Crossover Technologies | ke...@crossover.com
> If they keep you asking the wrong questions, they don't have
> to worry about the answers. --Thomas Pynchon
--
_______________________________________________________________________
Dan Blum to...@mcs.com
"I wouldn't have believed it myself if I hadn't just made it up."
_______________________________________________________________________
MSiggins
Germany last year. Whethr it was a new design or not I have no idea. I too
would like to know where they are now. You may also like to check out an
excellent piece on Eon by Peter Sarrett on his Game Report page.
Mike Siggins
Daniel Blum
> Mike Siggins
Which game was it?
Dave Dubin
: MSiggins (msig...@aol.com) wrote:
: > I don't know if they are still designing, but they had a game published in
: > Germany last year. Whethr it was a new design or not I have no idea. I too
: > would like to know where they are now. You may also like to check out an
: > excellent piece on Eon by Peter Sarrett on his Game Report page.
: > Mike Siggins
: Which game was it?
I'd heard it was called "Buzzle," but that it was a German edition of the
old Eon game "Runes." I might be misinformed, though.
I agree that the Sarrett piece on Eon is excellent: I think I concur in
every respect, except his comment on Borderlands expansions. Borderlands is
our group's game of choice (like Sarrett, we haven't had the nerve to
try Darkover). But we find that the two expansions add a lot to the game.
They make it harder to plan ahead, but also keep players from being squeezed
out too early. For example, during one game my opponents had me pushed off
to an island. One of them traded me enough lumber to build a ship, in the
hopes that I'd harry the coastlines of the others. But a careless shipment
by one player left crucial resources where I could easily raid them. I built
a dirigible and was back in business.
The Sarrett piece is at: http://www.wolfe.net/~peter/tgr/tgr6/eongames.html
Dave
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
David Dubin |Email: dsd...@lis.pitt.edu
Dept. Information Science |URL: http://www.pitt.edu/~dsdst3/dubin.html
University of Pittsburgh |"One of the Tall I'm Greatest Spans of Fooner"
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kurt Adam
:MSiggins (msig...@aol.com) wrote:
:> I don't know if they are still designing, but they had a game published in
:> Germany last year. Whethr it was a new design or not I have no idea. I too
:> would like to know where they are now. You may also like to check out an
:> excellent piece on Eon by Peter Sarrett on his Game Report page.
:
It was Buzzle. From what I understand it is a version of Runes.
--
ma...@vt.edu (Kurt Adam) WWW: http://www.vt.edu:10021/cns/mage/home.html
"Did I ever tell you about the time I performed an appendectomy with nothing
but a rusty sardine can?" - Dr. Benway
RICHARD IRVING
: There was a computer adaptation of BORDERLANDS (without expansions, I
: believe) entitled LORDS OF CONQUEST, which used the same mechanics but
: provided twenty alternate boards.
Lords of Conquest was a game similar to Borderlands with a few rules
modified to make the game a bit simpler to display on a 24x40 text screen.
(The game was for the Commodore 64, Atari 800, Atari ST, and the IBM PC.
I've played all but the IBM, curiously the ST version had weaker AI on
the computer opponent, but it was a lot faster deciding on a move.)
The main difference I remember in the rules eas that goods (wood, iron,
gold and coal) were placed in a central warehouse. (rather than the
goods being placed whereever they appeared on the map as in Borderlands)
The warehouse had to located in a territory. If the territory was taken
over, that player took all of your goods. (This was mainly used to
clear up a lot of the clutter on the board.) Also boats were madified
so that you could sail to any other territory that also boarder the same
sea area (if the map had sea area that were separated.)
The game had some 30 maps that were predesigned and a map generator
which could be given parameters to control generation: Size of
territories, all connected (so Islands weren't possible), "complexity of
shapes" (Simple shapes had few long appendanges), etc.
With all of the "classic" computer games that are being re-released
lately, maybe Electronic Arts (the original distributor) should consider
releasing an improved version.
--
Richard Irving rr...@pge.com
I don't like disclaimers, but I have to put them in. The opinions here
are my own and not necessarily PG&E's.
(As if it had any opinions about this stuff!)
Made with recycled electrons.
MSiggins
else help?
Mike Siggins
Brandon Freels
>You take no risk if you can convince somebody else to do it --
>You (having concluded that X is either the Wizard or the King): Do you
>suppose he's the Wizard?
>Z: Yeah, I think so.
>You: Don't tell me, tell him.
>Z. Good point. X, I challenge you. (triumphantly) You're the Wizard!
>X (triumphantly): No, I'm not. (Z is out of the game.)
>You (triumphantly): X, I challenge you. You're the King!
>(He is, so he is out of the game. You win.)
>Z (petulantly): You set me up for that!
>You: (insert your favorite patronizing phrase here.)
>
Actually in HOAX you are not supposed to reveal what you are accusing a
player of to the players not involved in an accusation. You hand the player
a suspicion card and say "Is that you?". He either says YES or NO...the
answer causing one of you to be out. In no way is who the player is accused
of being made public (they stress this in section 6 of the rules).
I personally go for playing blind HOAX. Sometimes I won't look at my
character and just start playing....this can drive other players nuts,
especially when they HOAX me and it turns out I AM that character after all.
:-)
--
Domo. Ja na.
Brandon Freels ( so...@coyote.rain.org )
"I'm witty naturally. I don't need quotes."
Chris Kessel
|> Kevin J. Maroney (ke...@crossover.com) wrote:
|>
|> : There was a computer adaptation of BORDERLANDS (without expansions, I
|> : believe) entitled LORDS OF CONQUEST, which used the same mechanics but
|> : provided twenty alternate boards.
|>
|> Lords of Conquest was a game similar to Borderlands with a few rules
|> modified to make the game a bit simpler to display on a 24x40 text screen.
This was a really good game. I played many, many times with a friend of mine.
The game was based on Borderlands, even said so on the Lords of Conquest
startup screen.
--
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Christopher Robin Kessel Portland, Oregon | Yes, I was named
chr...@protocol.com Protocol Systems | after *that* Christopher
-------------------------------------------------| Robin. Winnie the Pooh
Tigger: "I'm Tigger!" | is my hero. :)
Pooh: "Yes, I know. You've bounced me before." |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Nicholas Sauer
>
>Future Pastimes, the collective name for Peter Olatka, Bill Eberle,
>Jack Kitteridge, and sometimes Ned Horn or Doug Kaufman, designed a
>total of eight games, six published by Eon (their own company) and two
>by other producers:
>
Kevin, Kevin, Kevin! You're slipping in your old age man! They also
designed the game Eins, Zwei, Drei piublished by Ravensburger in Germany.
Then Pete and his son Greg did the Terratopia board game for the Nature
Company (I don't know if this counts though). I would also count the game
Playing Games which appeared in Encounter number three (I think).
>STAR TREK: THE ENTERPRISE (4) ENCOUNTER, published by West End
This game always felt a little "wrong" to me. I found out from Jack Kittredge
that the game was actually a wild west board game that they put the Star
Trek layer over (the center combat region would be two gunfighters walking
towards each other, rather than starships). Apparently, they were pressed
for time for the design and, revamped one of their older games.
That reminds me. There was also the Amber game they did for West End that
was never published. I believe that Pete's exact description of the game to
me was "it made Dune look like a walk in the park". Greg Costikyan actually
playtested it and, liked it alot.
>There was a computer adaptation of BORDERLANDS (without expansions, I
>believe) entitled LORDS OF CONQUEST, which used the same mechanics but
>provided twenty alternate boards.
There was also a computer game called Weather Tamers. As it was only released
for the C64, I wouldn't expect to see it back anytime soon.
>The Mayfair COSMIC ENCOUNTER and MORE COSMIC ENCOUNTER do include
>material that was not in the Eon edition, including new alien powers,
>edicts, and a new set of flares. I don't know how much involvement
>Future Pastimes had in the new material.
Not much is the short answer.
Nick Sauer
John R Christie
<ban...@rtp.ericsson.se> wrote:
> Has anyone had the following problem with HOAX?
>
> The wizard is too powerful. If I get the wizard card, I can
> just keep saying "I'm the Wizard...I'm immune." Pretty soon everyone
> is saying it, until people just a) get peeved and challenge...
> the real wizard then wins, simply because he got the wizard card.
> Or b) nobody can do anything until they slowly build up money to
> buy stuff with.
>
No, but then this is a game that can get bogged down in many ways if it is
taken too seriously, or if players become too stereotyped in their
approach. One problem that we have occasionally had, for example, is that
once all of the remaining players have been stopped by challenge from
using the king, no gold can enter the game, no more vaults can be formed,
and so no more real information can accumulate - it becomes a question of
who makes which risky guess when.
If you really think there is a problem with the wizard, it is easily fixed
with a house rule variant - decide on **one** thing a wizard cannot
declare immunity from - e.g. a tithe, theft, another wizard's spell, and
simply modify the rule accordingly.
HOAX is a great game to play half a dozen times before settling down to
something more serious, and then forget about till next time. It is a
disastrous game if you are going to go sitting down and trying to work out
winning strategies and the like!
By the way, if you proceed exactly as you describe above, all that will
happen is that someone will accuse you of being the wizard, and you are
out of the game! For the tactic to be any use, you would have to adopt the
practice of saying "I'm the wizard...I'm immune" every time you play,
whether or not you get the wizard card.
Happy gaming,
John.