Ex Novo

One of my birthday presents this year was a collaborative city-building game called Ex Novo. We played it yesterday and it was really fun. Players take turns to establish different terrain and events for the city by rolling on different tables, and then draw something appropriate on a mutual map that gets built up over the course of the game. We had centaurs making a settlement near where some fish people were already living, and the city was named Hippocampus (a name I was quite proud of). Various factions grew up and there were natural disasters, invading troglodytes, mushroom farming and an eventual coming together to rebuild. It was a very interesting exercise, and fun interpreting the often brief explanatory text and converting it into visual aspects on the map.