Greetings, dear reader! Today is World Book Day, and to celebrate, we have an agony aunt question to help those who like storytelling in their games, but who prefer the role of reader to writer…
Dear Aunty Chella,
I love the idea of games with a narrative, but the thought of role playing gives me performance anxiety! I like the idea of coming away from a games night with a story to tell, but I’m just not up for writing a character as I play – I feel way too self conscious… but it’s hard to do one without the other… right?
I want to know if there’s something else out there for me in the world of games. I enjoy lots of other kinds of board games and card games, from party games to the more serious kind. I’m good at quickfire word games, and escape rooms, and I enjoy games that have a frame story. I even find myself adding a bit of a story to games that don’t have one, imagining I’m a super-duper-spy-guy trying to get a real code word to my super-duper-spy-teammates before we’re all super-duper-killed by the assassin during an perfectly ordinary round of Codenames, for example.
I’m keen and willing to try other suggestions, but something about playing a role in general, and actually about D&D in particular, is too daunting – designing a character, committing to a campaign, counting up numbers on dice, talking in a ‘ye olde’ voice and pretending to be casting spells… it all feels very notme. But making up stories round a table, particularly in a competitive way – that is definitely my idea of fun! Can you please help?
More of GMT’s Digital Offerings that allow you to “Play GMT Games Anytime, Anywhere.
As I noted in our first article, we have created, in cooperation with individual programmers and digital game platforms, numerous ways for customers to experience our boardgames on your digital devices. We’ve done this for one large, underlying reason: We want players to be able to engage with and experience the learning, fun, challenge, and historical insights of our boardgames with other players from around the world on digital platforms where they can play the games generally much more quickly than they can on their physical game tables.
Online Multi-player Games that enforce the boardgame rules but have no solo AI opponents. We’ll talk about these today.
Traditional VASSAL and TableTop Simulator Game Modules. We’ll feature these in our next installment of the series.
Free-to-Play Online Games
Today we’ll talk about all of the Free-to-Play Games that we have authorized to be published on Popular Online Platforms. First, a few notes about these games:
Most GMT Games on online free-to-play platforms look and play like the boardgame. You can play them multi-player with friends or multi-handed “hot seat” solo, but there is no AI built in, so there is no “against the computer” solo play.
A nice feature of Rally the Troops, one of the platforms listed below, especially if you want to familiarize yourself with gameplay before you play yourself, is that you can “Watch” a game in progress or “Review” a completed game.
All we ask for those of you who play our games online is that at least one of you who are playing owns the physical boardgame. That’s how it would be if you were meeting friends face to face to play – ONE of you would bring the game. But there’s no requirement that all players own the game to play online. We WANT you to use online free-to-play options to “try before you buy” our boardgames.
Here’s the list of games we have authorized that are currently available on free-to-play online platforms:
Rally the Troops.com
GMT Games Available to play for free on Rally the Troops as of April 21, 2025:
1989: Dawn of Freedom (2-player Card-driven game (CDG) set in Eastern Europe in 1989)
Andean Abyss (1-4 player COIN series game on the struggle for power in Columbia in the 1990s )
Nevsky (1-2-player Levy & Campaign series game about the clash between Latin Teutonic and Orthodox Russian powers along the Baltic frontier in the mid-13th-Century.)
Plantagenet (1-2-player Levy & Campaign series game of the War of the Roses)
Red Flag Over Paris (2-player Card-driven game on the Rise and Fall of the Paris Commune, 1871. )
Time of Crisis (1-4 player Strategy game of Ancient Rome)
Vijayanagara (1-3 player Irregular Conflict Series game of Medieval India, 1290-1398.
Washington’s War (Strategic 2-player CDG about the American Revolution.)
Wilderness War (Strategic 2-player CDG about the French & Indian Wars)
I hope this article and “all in one place” listing of games gives you insight into what’s available to you for our free-to-play digital games offerings. We want all of you to have plenty of options to find your favorite ways to “Play GMT Games Anytime, Anywhere.”
Next Time: VASSAL, TableTop Simulator Module, Cyberboard for almost all of our games, plus Solo Apps!
Star Citizen has taken on almost mythic proportions over the years. Its creator, eager to outdo the visions of outer space offered by games like Eve Online, No Man’s Sky, and Starfield, has been working on fleshing out a wildly ambitious MMO simulation for more than a decade now, even as other projects in its wheelhouse come and go. Given how long the game has been in active production, though, it can be hard for interested players to know when to give Star Citizen a shot. Luckily, there’s no better time than now, since a current ‘free fly’ event makes it easier than ever to give the game a look.
Star Citizen can be a bit daunting to approach, especially given how dense its take on the space game genre has become over time. The ideal way to dip into it is through one of its free trial events, which not only provide missions for new players to situate themselves in its sprawling world, but don’t cost anything to try.
The current free fly event allows anyone to check out Star Citizen by signing up for an account and downloading the game for free. After completing its introductory missions, players can sample some of the activities available in the massively multiplayer space sim, piloting a roster of six different ships or heading out on foot to explore the game’s far future setting. It’s a great opportunity for anyone curious to see what the space sim is all about, or to check in on how it’s been coming along over the many years it’s been available to the public.
Star Citizen’s current free event runs until next Monday April 28. You can sign up to take part in it at the official website right here.
You can follow us on Google News for daily PC games news, reviews, and guides. We’ve also got a vibrant community Discord server, where you can chat about this story with members of the team and fellow readers.
What if you could play an MMO completely on your schedule? That’s the central thesis of new RPG Erenshor. It takes the style of Old School Runescape and the lived-in feeling of World of Warcraft, but flips these persistent virtual lands completely on their heads. Erenshor certainly looks like a classic MMORPG, with hundreds of ‘players’ questing and battling alongside you, but they’re not real people. Instead, this is a single-player game made to emulate the joys of ’90s MMOs, and it’s out now.
As someone who’s spent hundreds of hours in Final Fantasy 14, Erenshor immediately caught my eye. It looks like OSRS at a glance thanks to the vast open world, dungeons, and ostensible players scurrying about, but it couldn’t be more different. Instead of playing with actual people, you’re accompanied by what developer Burgee Media calls ‘Simplayers.’ These NPCs progress independently, persistently exist in the world, and group up alongside you just as MMO players would – but they’re not actual players.
You hunt monsters, complete quests, and earn mountains of gold just like WoW or Guild Wars, but it’s not in service of the grind. Instead, you’ll build a character just as you would in a single-player RPG.
The first day you start up Erenshor and begin the tutorial (a right of passage in any MMO), that’s when the ‘server’ becomes ‘live.’ The NPCs will progress right alongside you, all in pursuit of growth. So if you find some armor or weapons you don’t need, you can give them to the NPCs to help them become more powerful. When you come to a particularly difficult raid or dungeon, you can then recruit these characters to fight alongside you, that gear still slumped over their shoulders or in their hands.
Becoming part of the world in an MMO also means putting your quest to save the world aside, and Erenshor embraces this with open arms. If you want to simply explore, dig into the world’s history, or hunt for loot, you can do that. Burgee Media wants you to reexperience the feeling of playing a classic MMO, but without that same level of commitment.
Burgee Media has launched Erenshor in Steam Early Access now, with a demo also available. You can get involved right here.
If you’re looking for more, we’ve got all the new MMOs to watch out for, alongside the best multiplayer games to dive into with some friends.
You can follow us on Google News for daily PC games news, reviews, and guides. We’ve also got a vibrant community Discord server, where you can chat about this story with members of the team and fellow readers.
Shut Up & Sit Down is delighted to announce a partnership with Play to Z to hunt down the board game treasures that we think belong in every collection.
“SU&SD Presents” is a brand new line of titles that places a spotlight on some of the very best titles in modern board games. We’ve hand selected a fresh crop of exciting designs, helped to polish them to perfection, and P2Z will publish these incredible games for worldwide distribution.
It’s our goal that every game in the line could be your new favourite game.
We’ve got our first two games arriving next year, with a new title releasing annually thereafter!
First up is a brand new design from the king of co-op himself, Matt Leacock (Pandemic, Pandemic: Legacy, Daybreak, Forbidden Island). Matt has teamed up with Lisa Towell – a real world animal rescuer – to create Animal Rescue Team. You and your friends will puzzle out the perfect rescues of creatures big and small. One game might have you arriving just in time to save a coop of distressed chickens, and another may have you fruitlessly trying to rescue a cow with a motorcycle, or cursing yourselves for ‘unfortunate horse logistics’. The game will be crowdfunded in early 2025, and should find its way to your local game shop by October 2025.
The second in the “SU&SD Presents” line is a remastering of one of our all-time favourites, Dogs of War, from legendary designer Paolo Mori (Ethnos, Libertalia, Blitzkrieg!). This game has been out of print for far too long, so it is not only exciting to see it back, but also with a SU&SD spin on it, packing more punch in a smaller box, at a lower price. This will be the definitive version of a certified classic with a sumptuous new lick of paint by Edu Valls (Bitoku, Redwood, 3 Ring Circus). Dogs of War will be coming to retail in late 2025.
About Play To Z: Play To Z was founded in 2023 by a group of hobby game industry veterans. Zev Shlasinger, a 27 year game industry veteran who founded Z-Man Games in 1999, is President of Play To Z. Zev has published nearly 400 games in his career for Z-Man Games and WizKids, including huge hits such as Pandemic, Agricola, Fantasy Realms, Tales of the Arabian Nights, Merchants & Marauders, Super Skill Pinball, and many more. With its slogan “Games For All Gamers”, Play To Z publishes a wide spectrum of games, including Ascending Empires, YRO, Lynx, King’s Coalition, and more coming soon.
About Shut Up & Sit Down: Shut Up & Sit Down has been talking about board games since 2011. With our trademark blend of comedy and critical analysis, we have become one of the largest board game YouTube channels and podcasts. Find all of our work on ShutUpAndSitDown.com.
