Shadows Over Camelot
Posted by Rob Herman at April 30th, 2006
I played a game called Shadows Over Camelot today. In spirit, the game is very much like the Lord of the Rings game, in that the players attempt to beat the game cooperatively. However, there are a couple of big twists that I think mitigate some of the biggest flaws in Lord of the Rings.
First, the concept: There are two kinds of victory points, positive (“white swords”) and negative (“black swords”). The game is over when 12 points have been awarded; if at least 7 of the swords are black, the good guys lose. White swords are awarded for winning quests; black swords for failing to finish quests in time.
On each player’s turn, a Black card is (usually) revealed for the Progress of Evil, bringing one of the quests closer to defeat. Then the player gets to either move to a quest or, if already there, play a card towards defeating it. Some cards are more useful in some circumstances; for instance, only Grail cards can be used on the quest for the Grail; seeking Lancelot’s Armor requires specific combinations of Fight cards, while any card can be tossed into the Lake in the search for Excalibur.
Similar to the Lord of the Rings board game, evil’s advantage is that the good guys’ resources run dry as time wears on, while evil’s progress never falters; its disadvantage is that the good guys can coordinate their efforts, while it may not get around to dealing the killing blow in an almost-lost quest until too late.
The most important difference is the potential for a traitor. There are a maximum of seven players, and eight Loyalty cards, drawn randomly at the beginning of the game. One of them reads “Traitor.” (So the more players, the greater the likelihood, but there is always the chance that there is no Traitor.) The Traitor wins only if the rest of the good guys lose. Outing the Traitor is worth a white sword (1/7 of the goal of the game—not bad), while a false accusation turns a white sword black.
This is huge. Rather than the game being noninteractive, you now need to watch your fellow players for the telltale signs of them trying to throw the game. The tension is increased. Many of the game mechanics are built around secrecy—cards are played face down and shuffled before being examined, and you’re forbidden to name cards by their exact value—so there’s no chance of one player trying to direct the entire game. If the traitor isn’t outed, because of being so crafty, he turns two white swords black at the game end.
There’s also a series of additional options for an advanced game that are a little more creative than “Sauron starts closer to the good guys,” which is neat.
Days of Wonder publishes the entire rules to all their games on their website, which is pretty neat, so go check the game out if you’re interested.
That definitely sounds worth checking out. I don’t know if it can replace Lord of the Rings as a great cooperative game, though. Having a “possible” traitor moves it into a weird limbo state, where it’s sort of cooperative, sort of not. It may not be popular with everyone, but I think the fully-cooperative nature of LotR is a lot of fun. Also, I’ve gotten a lot of gameplay out of LotR because I can play it solitaire, while that wouldn’t be a possibility in this game.
Nevin: Do I know you? (I’m hoping word has spread even to people I don’t know, but not expecting that yet; mostly, I’m just curious)
Another wrinkle: In the three-player game, which is more difficult anyway, you don’t even look at your Loyalty card until six swords are placed. This gives the good guys a fighting chance, since it would be pretty much hopeless if the traitor were active from the beginning.
Yay!! First unknown poster!
I work at Hyland, and got this address from the message you posted to the (DOA) gaming group there.
I own Shadows over Camelot. I could not wait to play it, so I tried it solo a couple of times. I have since played it two player and three player, both times without the possibility of a traitor. I found it to be quite fun to play purely cooperative and solo. I got the game intending to play it without the traitor most of the time (my wife liked the cooperation in LotR and I thought she would like this too). My only worry is that the game might become too easy, but I hope that the advanced rules will mitigate this. I wish I could find more cooperative games.
I suspect that with experience, we’ll find it too easy with a large number of players without the possibility of a traitor. The large initial resources for Good, and the guarantee for having the powerful characters (like Arthur and Galahad) seem like they will be decisive.