Kempeth

Yeah definitely get the Atomic Bonds expansion. The competitive basegame is ridiculously broken. For example there are quests that send your all over the map. But the silly thing is if a quests needs to be "picked up" in one location and "turned in" in another then once it is picked up ANY player can just snipe the rewards if they're close to the destination. Also many exploration options are hillariously random. This makes the competitive version little more than a crapshoot. It's frankly mindboggling how anyone actually greenlit that design.

In coop all that is still the case but instead of being frustrated when another player gets an extremely lucky pull in the exploration, you cheer each other on. Sniping different quest stages between multiple players becomes a cool strategy instead of a braindead design choice. Most of these anoyances fall away and you can revel in the setting of the game.

The point is to tell an exciting story - there's no right or wrong definition of what that means for you.

The dice's purpose is to take you down paths you might not have chosen deliberately but the goal is still to have an exciting story. If the DM wants to be like "I recognize the dice have made a decision but given that it's a stupid ass decision, I've elected to ignore it" then he has my full support.

Maybe a cleaner way would be to decide up front: which outcomes am I ok with? and simply cap the roll at that. You know the paladin only has 17 HP left and you don't want the paladin to go down so the maximum roll you want is 16. So if you have roll 4d6 damage. You do: roll 3 roll 8 roll 12 roll ~~18~~ 16.

Probably the bridge. DM crafted such an amazing puzzle and the paladin being a good boy learned it perfectly. Group was like: You know it'd be fun to see what the DM does if I accidentally put my foot on it.

Also the five questions. You could see that coming from MILES away but it was still hilarious.

• Bohnanza is a good recommendation. It's very easy to learn and doesn't fall into the usual brackets of shedding or trick taking.
• Scout is my favorite combo shedding game (ie. you're shedding multiple cards at once). The way you're always either drawing or shedding keeps the play much more dynamic than in Daihinmin or the Great Dalmuti
• Frantic from GameFactory isn't widely available but in the EU you can probably get it. UNO on steroids. More exciting special cards and you can play them against any player, not just the one following you.
• Tichu a team based trick taking game that has a lot of fans around here. I personally have never really taken to it. It's fine but I don't get the rabid fandom some have for it.
• The Crew is ridiculously difficult with 5 and cumbersome with 2. Would only recommend it in between. But there it is a very clever game.