For the past four weeks my friend and I have been playing Time Tripper, a game Elias turned me onto. Time Tripper follows the adventures of a marijuana smoking soldier in Vietnam who travels in time and fights various tripped-out battles. The scenarios range from WWII, to cavemen, to T-Rexes, to really bizzare stuff like something called the Autozoo and King Pong (King Pong gives all new meaning to “tripping balls”).
While I sort of get the sense that Time Tripper is a paper war game aimed at beginners (and the D&D crowd), if you’re like me and grossly unfamiliar with paper war games, be aware that they aren’t the type of things you bust out when you can’t find Jenga for your next dinner party. In addition to being really complex, the rules are far from lucidly written (bear in mind we had two people trying to figure the game out).
If you are up to the challenge, the game is a lot of fun. Though it is a war game, its warped sense of humor make a really fun play once you figure it out, or half-way figure it out like us. If you don’t think you’ll be playing the paper version any time soon, DewKid.com wrote a Java version of the game. While the Java version does all the calculations for you, its insanely tough (I can make it past 3 boards or so without getting killed in a good game). The coolest thing about the Java adaptation is the graphics for the counters. Now if someone would just do a version of the game for Facebook.
I COMMAND THE FLUX.
whoa, wait…from the gamegeek site…
“Playing Time: 10 Minutes”
IT TOOK US THREE WEEKS!
Haha, I know tell me about it?
BoardGameGeek also lists Puerto Rico as the # 1 game of all time. Chess got # 201. BoardGameGeek’s math is a little skewed, in an analogous way that IMDB’s is, who is still championing the new Batman as the # 3 movie of all and forever-ever-ever history.
I have some images from the game that you can see.
Jim Dunnigan, the designer of Time Tripper, also did another fantasy game called Demons.
There are also a bunch of images of the game at BoardGameGeek.
Demons looks smoking.
I’ll bring Demons to Protocon.
If you think Time Tripper is hard to learn, try Mech War 2: Suez to Golan.
So much for Demons at Protocon.
You’ld probably like Ogre, GEV, and (maybe) Warp War.
Check them out on boardgamegeek.com.
Currently playing “World War I” by Jim Dunnigan.
Central Powers kick ass!
For even more information about paper wargames in general and the designer of “Time Tripper” in particular, see jimdunnigan.com.
Dunnigan founded SPI which expanded the paper wargaming hobby in the 1970’s and early 80’s and paved the way for RPGs which eventually took over the hobby.