La Granja

To honour the sub rosa return of a well-known spammer from the neighbouring neck of the woods, we dusted off one of his favourite games. I had played it twice in a row years ago and had not been thrilled. This time, though, at the right table and with the right group, La Granja shone in a way I did not expect.

I will not pretend that my experience here is a detailed mechanical dissection: I do not have specific rounds, actions, or individual systems to set down. What remained with me was the feeling of a game in its genre that asks for a group willing to meet it on its own level and invest in the session.

For me, the difference was not attributable to one particular rule or to a specific form of interaction; the material itself offers no such details. It was clear, however, in the move from unfortunate online games on Yucata to a proper tabletop session: with people who enjoy this sort of game, the flow of the game gains far more force.

In the end, it is rightly considered one of the very good games in its genre. It is also one of those rare cases where I happily revise my initial judgement upwards: it was not the game I remembered from those early plays—or perhaps I, and my group, simply were not ready to see it as it deserved.

Updated session

The later session confirmed rather than overturned this change of opinion. After a few unsuccessful games on Yucata during lockdown, I brought it back to the table and understood even more clearly how strong a game it can produce with the right group. The real shift is compared with my first encounters when it was released: I have matured as a player since then, and I can now see its greatness much more clearly.