Elder Sign

If you're anything like me, you have one really competitive friend who sucks the fun out of games by either throwing a fit when they lose, or simply refusing to play at all. For those people, I would highly recommend Elder Sign, a co-operative board game where all the players must work together to beat the game.

Each player has their own character with natural abilities and weapons. The players take turns entering different "rooms" and rolling the six green dice to see if they will survive. If they survive, the room's card is theirs along with whatever treasures are in the room, but if not, they may lose sanity and/or health points. Since each character has his or her own abilities, strategic planning between players is advised before entering a room.

Character Kate Winthrop starts with 6 sanity points (blue skulls), 4 health points (red hearts), a spell card (book symbol), and a special weapon card (dagger symbol). Her special ability: she is immune to all terror attacks and monsters cannot appear during her turn.

Collect clue coins (shoe prints) to earn extra rolls of the dice. Collect enough seals (pentagram coins) in the rooms over the course of the game to prevent the final monster from roaming free and causing havoc. 

Winthrop has collected five seals, two clue coins, one common weapon card (yellow), three uncommon weapon cards (red), one spell card (purple), and defeated one room (large card, right) and one monster (green rectangle above room).

Elder Sign is a game of strategy and luck, and by working together and pooling resources, every player is a winner. Plus, it's a lot of fun as far as RPG board games go.