Jozef's Inn ~ Ye Ancient BoBS ToO Drinking Hole

[Ross Fisher]

Welcome to the general discussion thread. Feel free to get weird with it!

[NOD]

This thread should be "pinned".

 

Good idea and interesting game.

 

1.     1. Construction time?

 

 

Chapter I: "The Return Home" Entries will close and voting will open on Monday 3 November.

 

Chapter I: "The Return Home" Entries will close and voting will open on Monday 3 November.

 

The Challenges

Every other month, players will be given a prompt. You will then have until the end of the month to build a Lego MOC in response. Digital or physical, large or small, purist or third-party, legal or illegal; we don't mind. If you put something together, you're good.

 

My criticism concerns the construction time. I only see 30 days.

 

2.     2. BOBS TOO?

 

 

Will BOBS TOO replace regular BOBS and will there not be an Era III?

 

Firmly no. Era III is still in the works. BOBS Tales of Old is a side project, an escapade into an earlier time frame of the BOBS setting.

It is not meant as a replacement whatsoever. More like an expansion pack in game terms, bringing something alternative and new.

 

What happens to BOBS TOO when BOBS Era III is released? 

Edited October 12, 2025 by NOD

[Khorne]

17 hours ago, NOD said:

This thread should be "pinned".

Good idea and interesting game.

Thanks! I hope you are intrigued enough to join .

We didn't pin this topic, because we didn't want to have too much pinned topics at the top of the forum, like it is with BOBS currently.

All regular questions can also be posed in the Introduction topic. Jozef's Inn is the equivalent of José's Inn for more loose banter, hence is why it isn't pinned.

 

17 hours ago, NOD said:

1. Construction time?

My criticism concerns the construction time. I only see 30 days.

The reason for the limited construction time is that we don't want the Challenges lasting too long, as not to lose momentum and keep it moving forwards.

 

17 hours ago, NOD said:

2. BOBS TOO?

What happens to BOBS TOO when BOBS Era III is released? 

Currently, we have envisioned it as an interim until Era III, but the setup is easy enough to keep it going concurrently with Era III if there is still enough interest to do so. They are different settings and while there is an overlap in demographic, some will understandably prefer to build in "future" pirate BOBS full-time again.

[Ross Fisher]

18 hours ago, NOD said:

My criticism concerns the construction time. I only see 30 days.

This is correct. I guess with more time, players could build more impressive responses. Likewise, less build time would limit what they're able to do. One month felt like a reasonable compromise that allowed us to keep running prompts at a good pace, telling an unfolding story. 

18 hours ago, NOD said:

What happens to BOBS TOO when BOBS Era III is released?

That depends on how well this game goes. The more popular it is, the longer it is likely to survive. Successful elements might rear their heads in BOBS. There's a good chance that stories we write here will officially become part of the lore of BOBS. 

Edited October 13, 2025 by Ross Fisher

[Ross Fisher]

Unrelated: Has Corrington ever been linked with Clay Moorington? I feel certain there is an association back in their history...

[Professor Thaum]

11 hours ago, Ross Fisher said:

Unrelated: Has Corrington ever been linked with Clay Moorington? I feel certain there is an association back in their history...

I like this idea... the Arthurian myth was dusted off and renewed through the clever and witty LEGO lens. And now, let's turn back the clock for the Nexo Knight concept. 

What a pity, I just signed up with Mogholay 

[Ross Fisher]

1 hour ago, Professor Thaum said:

What a pity, I just signed up with Mogholay 

Don't let it stop you. Most of the Faction challenges will let you build in other nations. 

And yeah, I like the idea of the Nexo Knights being an Arthurian Myth. One day these heroes vanished into thin air, but legend says they'll return when you need them most. 

I'm also the guy who put Ninjago into the main BOBS game, so this is very on-brand for me.

[CaptainPolluxofOrion]

Omg... some month away from the forum and there is a new roleplaying Game .... And wow what a nice one! 

[Ross Fisher]

@CaptainPolluxofOrion Wanna join? Any particular nation catch your interest?

[CaptainPolluxofOrion]

On 11/18/2025 at 8:50 AM, Ross Fisher said:

@CaptainPolluxofOrion Wanna join? Any particular nation catch your interest?

I'm very interested. =) Is it allowed to build digital?

[Khorne]

3 hours ago, CaptainPolluxofOrion said:

I'm very interested. =) Is it allowed to build digital?

Yeah sure, all types of builds are welcome!

[CaptainPolluxofOrion]

23 hours ago, Khorne said:

Yeah sure, all types of builds are welcome!

 Nice! I think when i join, there will be both Digital and real. I have a lot of Minifigs for that time period, but not much Buildingstuff for Buildings/Ships/Landscapes

[Khorne]

1 hour ago, CaptainPolluxofOrion said:

 Nice! I think when i join, there will be both Digital and real. I have a lot of Minifigs for that time period, but not much Buildingstuff for Buildings/Ships/Landscapes

Great! Like Ross said: any Faction in particular you are keen on?

Don't worry about not being able to build big stuff in real bricks, like I said: all types of build are welcome. I'm usually also only able to build smaller stuff.

If you want, you could still do an introduction build for Chapter I, even though the voting has ending. It's still a nice way to start of. A second Challenge will come early December.

[NOD]

What I particularly liked about Brethren of the Brick Seas ERA II was that I could build something in a settlement independently of competitions and time pressure.

Tales of Old apparently consists only of competitions with a 30-day build time!

Tales of Old currently consists only of competitions where professionals can win with real bricks. There is only one winner! First place, the winner! That's the one with the best build. Everyone else lost!

What happened to a participant who told a good story?

What happened to a participant who created a digital build?

Tales of Old is already, in its first competition, only for Lego professionals who build with real bricks. The second competition is no better. Again, only 30 days. The challenge is very high, and stories are not judged separately! Digital builds?

Brethren of the Brick Seas ERA III. Building with real bricks, digital bricks, and storytelling participants are all welcome! Existing and new players should have fun! Building something in a settlement that exists independently of competitions.

 Not everyone is a professional builder. You should also give beginners a chance to participate in the game. 

Edited December 25, 2025 by NOD

[Khorne]

Thanks for your input and POV, @NOD. I understand your gripes, so let me take some time to address them. I tried subdividing my post per point you raised for ease of reading.

First of all, BOBS:TOO was never meant to be a full replacement for the regular BOBS game and all of its mechanics, as has been said a few times. It is merely meant as a light-weight exploration of the BOBS setting in a different time and focused on the "Old World" - an expansion to BOBS, a filler that fits the lull as we wait for Era III.

1. "Competitions"

All of the mechanics that work behind the scenes of BOBS are very time consuming to set up and maintain properly and takes a lot of people to let it function smoothly. This is a handicap we tried to tackle to set up something simpler.

Hence why we tried a different approach for Tales of Old, which is more narratively driven, instead of via economic game systems and incentives. Somewhat in between BOBS and Guilds of Historica. The Challenges are narrative prompts to get you going and build something accordingly. Personally, I don't see them as competitions per se. More like kickstarts to get me building, so I don't share the sentiment that "everyone else lost". To lower the workload for admins, we decided to let the community vote for what they think is their favorite build. As said in the guidelines: "you can vote based on the build itself, the story, or whatever." So, on paper it's not necessarily the 'best' or 'biggest' build that "wins". BUT, I agree with your point that in reality this might perhaps always end up being the case. Thus, perhaps the way a build is judged is something we should take a look at for the future, with a separate scoring for the build and the accompanying story.

Also, digital builds are very much welcome. This is also stated in of the general rules topics. No one is prohibited from building digitally. I even made a digital build myself. I don't share your skills in making it come alive as much, however, so mine is just a minifig deprived house .

 

2. Build times / lack of other incentives

The "short" build time of ca. 30 days is a decision we made to keep a forward momentum going and deliver new incentives to build en lieu of the old EGS. However, I can understand this comes across as short. This is also something we can take a fresh look at. Plus, perhaps it might help to set some secondary general challenges without any time limit, with maybe some tied to specific Faction characteristics. Some examples, top of mind:

• Show the profession of your character
• Build an important moment from your character's life
• [COR] Show your allegiance to the King / Claimant
• [OL-Afar] Show how you trade with the natives of Afar
• ...

Again: something to look into as we move forward. HOWEVER, as I said at the beginning of the post: "we're aiming for a lightweight experience, with only a small amount of administration required", so I want to be clear we're not looking on adding anything nearly as complex as EGS or other complex systems that require tracking rankings or whatever.

 

3. City building (and Freebuilds)

While it hasn't been explicitly stated, everyone is free to found, build and expand their own city in the Faction they chose. But, once again: there will be no system tracking the income of said city or an underlying trade mechanic. It'd be more like in Guilds of Historica, where a builder creates their own city more for storytelling and MOC'ing purposes than a means to garner in-game currency. It is certainly not prohibited to create your own settlement if you want to! 

Same goes for Freebuilds: not forbidden to do so. I even did two small freebuilds myself. You do raise a point that perhaps this is something that ought to be communicated more explicitly. On the other hand, I think the lack of posting of Freebuilds also has to do with lower activity in building RPG's in general.

 

4. In summary

• BOBS:TOO will never have any complex mechanics, as it was not intended to have those
• We'll take a second look at the voting
• We can look into the 30 days build time for the main Challenges
• We can look into a small series of general (Faction) Challenges without time constraints
• You are free to create your own city and build in it
• Freebuilds, independent of any Challenges, are very much welcome
• Digital builds are also welcome, and have in fact always been welcome from the start

 

13 hours ago, NOD said:

 Not everyone is a professional builder. You should also give beginners a chance to participate in the game. 

That is true and it has never been the intention to bar anyone from participating. Everybody is welcome to do so.

I appreciate your feedback and if anyone else wants to share their views, please do.

Merry Christmas and happy holidays, @NOD and everybody else in the community!

[Ross Fisher]

I came up with most of the mechanics for the game, so I'd like to address your concerns again @NOD.

On 12/25/2025 at 9:21 PM, NOD said:

I could build something in a settlement independently of competitions and time pressure.

Agree. This is why we leave a month between each challenge. This is the "off-season" where you're encouraged to build whatever you want. For example, @Khorne built his lovely Battle of Ice River freebuild. 

In BOBS, sometimes players took it upon themselves to provide prompts for those like "Oktoberfest" and "Soccer Tournament". If you'd like to start one of those, please feel free to do so. 

On 12/25/2025 at 9:21 PM, NOD said:

Tales of Old apparently consists only of competitions with a 30-day build time!

As previously stated, we have a timeframe of 30 days to balance between better builds and more challenges. I actually think shorter timeframes favour beginners because they prevent people from spending months building massive creations. 

I have suggested an entry can just be minifigures. I will make this more explicit.

On 12/25/2025 at 9:21 PM, NOD said:

Tales of Old currently consists only of competitions where professionals can win with real bricks.

On 12/25/2025 at 9:21 PM, NOD said:

Everyone else lost!

I disagree with this. Every player who builds an entry, enjoys themselves and gets feedback is a winner. I deliberately made the prize for getting the most votes as small as possible. They get to help decide what happens in the next challenge. 

But I do take your point. I've played other games on Eurobricks and it's really hard to find a way to reward builds without punishing other builds. BOBS set minimum entry criteria for challenges, which meant that you couldn't respond if you didn't have enough bricks. Moreover, if GMs didn't think your build was good enough, it wasn't allowed to earn points. 

SW Factions was worse. Your builds earned points according to the GMs opinions. GMs were also faction leaders. They also didn't explain why they scored those points the way they did. 

BOBS TOO aims to simplify this. We let all players vote on builds and explain why they voted the way they did. 

On 12/25/2025 at 9:21 PM, NOD said:

What happened to a participant who told a good story?

What happened to a participant who created a digital build?

Love this. People can vote for digital builds and stories, and include this in their reasoning. 

On a personal note, I don't normally like digital builds because I rarely think it looks as good as real bricks. But in the last challenge I voted for one digital build and for one real brick build because I thought they were equally good. Voters are free to form their own opinions.

I didn't set up separate categories because I didn't want to complicate things. The "prize" for having the highest voted build is that you get to help decide what happens in the next challenge. If it was anything more significant, like earning in-game points, or winning actual Lego sets, I probably would have. The "prize" is just to focus builders. 

Also, I didn't want to have to force players to vote for those categories if they didn't want to. Its up to you guys to decide what "good" looks like and to vote accordingly. 

I really encourage you to submit a build, any build, for this challenge. See how you get on! I think you might enjoy yourself. Then vote for what you think is most deserving of a win. If you want to encourage beginners, digital builds and stories, vote for them! I'm sure people would really appreciate your positive feedback.

Edited December 27, 2025 by Ross Fisher

[NOD]

Thank you all for the detailed answers. I understand and respect your opinion and rules.

 

 The goal of a Tales of Old or future "Brethren of the Brick Seas ERA III" should be to encourage as many participants as possible to play on a long-term basis.