Gathering of Engineers

This blog is closed

2006-06-19T04:30:00.000-07:00

Goodbye - I hardly knew ya!

2006-06-15T09:11:00.000-07:00

The Gathering of Engineers will be no longer.

I first joined the Gathering of Engineers crew to help forstall this event - several of the original members had hit busy points in their schedules that were preventing them from posting regularly, so I stepped up to try and fill in some of that gap.

Sadly, it appears as if that was not enough to re-invigorate the GoE. Peoples schedules didn't settle down, and a few of them developed other outlets for their game related comments and analysis.

I will say I'm disappointed - I've enjoyed the back-and-forth of the two Questions of the Month I've been involved in, and I've also enjoyed the opportunity to spout off about various games, and games related gatherings. I'll miss having the opportunity to "debate" gaming issues - I've enjoyed having the chance to discuss these topics with fellow gamers.

Dave mentioned that this may have primed me to start my own blog, and he's correct, I've just set it up (going with Blogger, since it's the one I already know a bit about how to use). It's over here - if you have suggestions for a better name, I'm all ears (this one was picked to get it up quickly).

Anyway, my 'Geek profile is here - hope to see y'all around, either on BGG or on my new Blog.

Happy gaming!

And now it's time for so long...

2006-06-13T20:20:00.000-07:00

...so we'll sing just one more song.

As you probably read yesterday, the Gathering of Engineers is ceasing publication after this week. It's been an interesting experiment. Writing for a group publication like this is definitely different than writing for a personal blog. I almost didn't think of it as a blog, per se – it was more like a slowly-published e-zine to me. I certainly tried to give my articles on here more thought than I generally do for my personal blog.

The timing of the shutdown is a good one for me. My gaming time has been a tad restricted over the last few months, and with a new baby coming in August, it's not going to get any better. It's hard to write about gaming when you're doing very little of it. It's tough to come up with an idea when the sum total of your gaming is two Roma sessions, Bang!, PBEM Here I Stand, and reading the rules to 1860 again.

Thanks for all the comments and emails you sent over the months. I know some of you have shown interest in ideas I've started – I'll try to continue things like the looks at sports games and elephant eating over on Incunabula.

It's been fun. I'm definitely better for the experience. I hope you feel like you're better for reading it. Maybe we'll do this again - who knows?

Happy Trials

2006-06-12T17:06:00.000-07:00

After ten months, the Gathering of Engineers blog will cease to be. We have all enjoyed the solid group identity and exchanges that made us unique among the gaming blogs, but we feel that the collective failure to post regularly has largely undermined that quality. The good news is that this does not reflect on the health of the Rip City Gamers, where gaming opportunities abound as much as ever.

I will leave the blog open for final goodbyes for another week - I know at least one of the others will not be able to resist - and the archive will be accessible indefinitely after that. In case you do not hear from the others, here is a proxy goodbye:

I am sure you will be hearing a lot from KC in the future. I hope his design/playtesting seminars go beyond the local scene, as his prototype work is top-notch. If he does pop up elsewhere, I am sure an announcement will show up on KC's BoardGameGeek page(!).

It looks like Chris is finding time again to post material to his own blog. I am sure that any material he would have posted here will end up there eventually.

Tim - we hardly knew you! I suppose he will drift back into obscurity, although I'm not sure that such a term is appropriate for someone with a standing invitation to the Gathering of Friends. Possibly we just primed him to start his own blog...

You won't have to work hard to find Dug. The articles on his gaming blog are great quality, and his rants on The Dice Tower are very amusing if mishandled by the hosts (e.g., you don't see Barbara Walters getting in a last word after Andy Rooney's spots; to paraphrase David Mamet, "that's why they call it a rant!")

Eric's activity on his own blog has been sparse since GoE kicked off, but I am sure he will be posting similar articles at a similar regularity at his old home.

As for myself, I am sure the occasional gaming content will pop up at Death Metal Cafe, and it wouldn't surprise me to see another blogging venture emerge in the near future. Other than that, I will see you on the Geek (or, for you local folks, at Game Storm).

Thanks to all you readers - especially those that played along with the Questions of the Month - and thanks to those who volunteered to help with the Game Group series.

New vs Old

2006-06-07T23:00:00.000-07:00

I like to think I'm as interested in the games I have as in new games, but I'm finding more and more evidence that when it comes to getting excited about playing a game, it's all about the new stuff.

Let me be clear about this: when I'm playing the game, I'm much more interested in having fun, and that has little to do with the game itself, other than it being a good game (i.e.; not Rocketville). In other words, what seems to stimulate me during a game is different than what stimulates me when picking a game. Yikes.

That's a bit of a surprising thing to learn about oneself, and I suspect it applies to a lot more than just games in my life. I've already discussed how men and women are wired differently, and that the women-in-chainmail-bikini tendency of fantasy art plays directly into this. One of the differences is that men are all about new and different, and games are no exception. However, what I'm coming to understand that different is important to men when they are making choices, but that it stops being important once that decision has been made.

So, for example, playing "vanilla" Settlers seems boring when we are deciding what to play, but fun when playing it. Assuming, of course, that the company is good.

Recognizing this essential truth about myself is a bit alarming, and I have a strong suspicion that it applies to a lot more than just game selection. However, it does inform the question whether I prefer new games or old games. And the answer is, quite simply, both.

I expect that if I manage to actually internalize this truth, the answer will start shifting over to older games that I already know and enjoy playing. This is already true to some extent with wargames, although wargames have the quality of requiring much more preparation and understanding to play, and thus have a built-in impediment to the Shiny Factor. Mind you, this hasn't prevented me from buying tons of wargames that I will never play, and may never even set up (although I almost always unfold the map and clip the counters). Sometimes I even make it through the rules.

Still, when it comes down to brass tacks, I will always enjoy even a mediocre game played in good company to a great game played with people I don't like much. In the half-turkey sandwich / four-course meal spectrum, I guess that means I enjoy cigars and spirits. ;-)

All For Some, Some For All

2006-06-05T23:30:00.000-07:00

I cannot do this Question of the Month justice in the height of allergy season, so I will post something brief and dull.

As for new games, I still like being exposed to them so that I can follow the related Internet discussions. However, something that Dave Bernazzani wrote on Nigglybits a couple of years ago resonated with me at the time, and has stuck with me since:

"It's been a couple of years now where I've really slowed down on new game purchases. There was a time when I would buy most of the Essen and/or Nuremberg releases based on blurbs only. Nowadays, Essen comes and Essen goes - the games eventually get brought to the various events I attend. Although I'm not pushing to get them played, I will, sooner or later, get my chance to try them. Most games end up falling squarely into the middle ground of "yes, I'd play but don't feel the need to own" these days. And I have a huge supply of games that I enjoy that don't see enough play time as-is. I'd rather play a hundred favorites than play a hundred new games looking for one more favorite."

As for choosing a set of games to master, the difficulty would be getting the group to agree to that common pool. Personally, it would be a big risk for me to commit to such a thing as I find that I frequently deviate from the group's collective opinion. It would be difficult for me to motivate myself to make the trek across town if I knew that, in every session, one or more of {Union Pacific, Wallenstein, Amun Re} would be played.

As I see it, the main benefit in playing the same game repeatedly is not having to work through rules explanations, clarifications, and misunderstandings. It is less frustrating for all involved, and it is much more satisfying to win in these settings, where your opponent has no excuse/reason other than his inferior intellect (heh-heh). Also, in multi-player games, it is important to have players become less absorbed in the game mechanisms themselves and more on the interactions between players. Given that, I would prefer a tighter rotation, but no so tight that I cannot get some of my own favorites into the mix.

Shiny New Things

2006-06-04T21:21:00.000-07:00

Do you prefer learning new games frequently - but only playing each game once or twice - or playing a smaller set of games several times each?

My first reaction to this is “lately, I would just prefer playing games period – new,old, good, bad, whatever!” Spring is always a tough time for playing games, especially now that I’m coaching baseball. Still, the question is valid and pretty straightforward for me to answer.

I’d like to be able to say that I’m a focused person and like to delve deep into the intricacies of a small set of games, exploring nuances to strategy and honing my skills. It ain’t me, babe – I’m much more likely to gravitate to the shiny new game that just arrived.

Deep down inside, I think I know why I lean towards the new stuff:

Enjoying the new thing is part of my nature. I like hearing new bands, trying new foods, traveling to new countries, and of course trying out the next new game.
I’m a strong intuitive first-game player. I have a pretty good track record of winning games where everyone is playing for the first time. I don’t have nearly the same track record playing established games where others have honed their strategies. I don’t prepare myself well for games like this, and I don’t play individual games enough to become adept. Possibly the only exception is Wallenstein where I have a pretty good track record online at spielbyweb.

Perhaps this is a self-perpetuating cycle? Because I play the shiny new games, I don’t improve my skills at established games, and because I know I’ll get beat re-playing games I move onto the new games. Interesting theory, but in truth I don’t care very much about winning.

There are some games I’ve played recently that I’ve been very interested in exploring more deeply. Twilight Struggle was a blast, and I’ve lost so quickly in both my games as the Americans that I’m dying to find a strategy that can’t get me safely through the middle game. War of the Ring continues to beckon, especially with the new expansion coming. I played a prototype this weekend while down in southern Oregon with the Funagain team that I’m anxious to try out with the family – I think Julie would really enjoy it.

Odds are, though, that I’ll continue my quantity over quality streak this year and keep playing single games to burn down my list. I dreamed up a crazy idea this weekend with KC and Rita – hold a weekend gaming marathon where participants earn points/credits by helping me knock games off my burn-down list. KC suggested that I could tag-team by having two groups working with me – with the off-group always preparing the next game for play. I’d have to offer some serious incentives / bribes to torture my gaming friends with such a death march, but it could be fun.

Bells and Whistles

2006-06-03T09:26:00.000-07:00

Note to our rabid readers – Chris Brooks will be appearing in this spot tomorrow. We’re currently in Ashland meeting with Funagain staff, and Chris did the driving yesterday when he could have been blogging. I’m so grateful!

Do you prefer learning new games frequently - but only playing each
game once or twice - or playing a smaller set of games several times each?

On the main question, I fall more to the side of “learn many.” But what I play more often than once or twice appears to be based on the following conditions:

1 What my family will play – we play a lot of Mah Jongg, Can’t Stop, Liar’s Dice, Havoc (surpise!), Settlers, lately playing more Tichu, Frank’s Zoo, Mall of Horror and Pick Picnick.
2 What the game groups I go to will play – there’s a new “meetup group” in town that will play older stuff like Carcassonne, Puerto Rico and Settlers, which is great to introduce new players into the genre.
3 What Spielbyweb, BSW or other services have online (the easiest way for me to repeat play), especially Tichu where practice really makes the game more fun. I learned Bus this way. I play backgammon non stop online, but rarely in person.
4 What our RipCity gamers will play, often at planned events like a Die Macher day or a Roads and Boats day.
5 What’s being offered at game conventions. Often I can choose to play deeper game favorites like Power Grid, Age of Renaissance, Manifest Destiny, etc.

I also have a special case – prototype games I design have to get played a LOT, so that’s my main “play many times” sort of game. Currently we’re playing Indiana Jones (code name), Isla Nova, BadgeBadgerBadger and Sphinx of Black Quartz.

So as I was thinking about this more, it occurred to me that there were some related questions as well that have to do with how much time a given game takes:

1. What games benefit from practice, and so need to be played several times to get the most out of them?
2. Which games return my investment in time? A game that doesn’t really appeal to me may not be worth the time it would take to “play well.”
3. Which games are easy, generally “fillers” so they come out often (Can’t Stop, Diamante, For Sale)

I’m pleased that our main group invests time in games like Die Macher that you have to play more than once. We have been trying to play more than once a year (!) Roads and Boats is on the list too of games you should play more than once a year. We have a standing “third Saturday of the month” game day for longer games, but lately have also discussed anyone interested can name the game and name the day and seel players.

I think we once tried a “game of the month” – which I think could come back as an idea. The concept was that we’d pick a game (1-2 hours type) and offer it at each weekly session for a month. Those that want to get really good can play it weekly, others can choose since we nomally have at least two games going at once.

This is a good idea for deeper games like Power Grid (or Funkenschlag before that) where
1 I get good vibes even playing the first time
2 The game has enough depth and more than one victory path
3 The game rewards trying different strategies, if not with victory at least with knowledge of how those other paths work.

And here’s my list of games I like that benefit from practice:
* Tichu
* Mu und Mehr
* Sticheln
* Power Grid and Funkenschlag before that
* El Grande
* Wallenstein
* Liberté
* Roads and Boats
* Indonesia
* Antike
* Princes of Florence
* Manifest Destiny
* Caylus
* 18xx (though I’ve never played!)
* Dune (never played)

And there are other big games that I don’t play because I don’t want to invest the time to learn to play well. But then my limited experience generally means I will do poorly in the game, or I will do well but have no idea what I did that made it so.

Exploration in Depth

2006-06-01T22:07:00.000-07:00

My first question of the month - and first crack at the response!

The question at hand:

Do you prefer learning new games frequently - but only playing each game once or twice - or playing a smaller set of games several times each?

As people who read my post on 18xx games may guess, my general preference is to play games enough times to get a good understanding of the rules, and an opportunity to experiment with different strategies - hopeful that I'll find an effective one, in fear that I'll find the optimal one (rending a game "solved"). This assumes, of course, that a particular game rewards this experience - there are definitely games that, rather than revealing hidden depths, lose their appeal after a few plays, because the decisions become trivial or uninteresting. These games tend not to be my preference.

This prediliction may come from having been playing these games of ours for over 10 years (I bough my first German game circa 1994 or so) - so I've been exposed to a lot of new games over the years, and it's a rare gem that isn't reminiscent of something I've played previously. Sometimes a new game will combine well-worn mechanics in a new way (or ways), and that can result in an interesting and "new" experience, but on the whole most games are at least echoes of earlier ones.

I prefer games that reveal themselves best when played a few times (in relatively close succession), to allow experience from earlier games to be rewarded in later games. This is a balancing act, however - if a game is TOO obscure (or complex, or whatever) and the learning curve is too steep, it can be difficult to pick up the first time, and even more problematic it may be difficult to interest other people in trying the game once you are experienced. 18xx games definitely suffer from this, in that many people hear stories about how hard it is to win your first game, and are turned off (an application of the inverse of Cooley's Law, perhaps).

A more Euro game that has suffered from this to some extent is El Caballero - in my previous group, one of the players become very good, by playing at conventions and invitationals and the like, and this lead to the game being pulled out rarely (since the assumption was that this player would stomp on the rest of us). El Grande also suffers from this, to some extent, as it certainly rewards regular play - and also has enough "fiddly bits" to it that it helps to keep everything straight if it's been played recently.

So, while I'll admit to enjoying trying new games - certainly, that is one of the appeals of going off to Ohio every year - my preference is to plumb the depths of a particular game. How this is accomplished varies from group to group - my group in Dallas (The CardBenders) tended to pick a game and try to get a game at our weekly meeting for a solid month, and if it was a hit it would likely keep coming back (El Grande was one of these hits). This didn't prevent us from trying new things, but it gave us an opportunity to get to know a game well, and decide whether it was interesting enough to continue to explore. The RipCityGamers, my current group, definitely seem to be more interested in trying new games. The existance of "burn-down" lists are helping bring out some older games now and again, but to some extent these are one-shot appearances, not sustained engagements, and as such still don't allow the opportunity to explore the games in depth.

So - I definitely prefer to delve into a game, and hope that it has enough depth to it to reveal something about itself over multiple plays. I enjoy trying new things, for certain, but I'd like to get to know games a bit better before I decide whether they're for me or not!

Until next week, happy gaming!

Question of the Month: June

2006-06-01T00:51:00.000-07:00

Each blog entry for the next week will answer the following question, provided by Tim, who gets first crack at it: "Do you prefer learning new games frequently - but only playing each game once or twice - or playing a smaller set of games several times each?"

Those of you playing from home can use this entry to post your own answers!

Eating an Elephant

2006-05-30T23:09:00.000-07:00

After reading Dave's post yesterday, I found it interesting that we're heading two completely separate directions on how we want to spend our limited gaming time. Dave goes for the half turkey sandwich, and I go for the four-course meal. Probably explains our physical shapes, as well.

As I alluded to last week, I spent a good amount of time this past week attempting to learn OCS. It was difficult to find more than 45 minutes or so to really dig into it, but I gave it my best. It didn't help that our older car threatened to die completely on us last Thursday. We took the opportunity to trade it in for a new Scion xB. Needless to say, I was a tad distracted by that for a good chunk of the weekend.

Anyway, here's some of the techniques I used to attempt to learn this game.

Punch out all the counters for the scenario we'd be playing and set them up.
What on earth do all these colors on the counters mean? Time to study the counter symbology. (OCS uses four different colors of numbers and backgrounds in their unit ratings to indicate a variety of things. All important, of course.)
Find the terrain legend. (What is it doing on map A, anyway? What do you mean it's not on a separate reference card?) Examine the lay of the land to find choke points. The scenario is played on one full map, and the hexes are five miles each. However, since the turns represent half a week, a unit can cover a LOT of ground in one turn, particularly if it's on a primary road. I still am having trouble wrapping my brain around the scale.
Okay, I'm playing the Italians, what forces do I have? What are the objectives of the scenario? What's the supply situation?

That was one night's worth. Probably an hour or so of just orienting myself to the physical components of the game.

Then, I started reading. I didn't read the rules in order, but skipped around reading a major section at a time – I covered air power a couple times. Had trouble getting that to stick in my brain.

Monday night, the day before we were supposed to play, I set up the scenario again, and starting mocking out plans – nothing really concrete, just an idea of how the game would flow. The British have a LOT to do in two short turns, but it definitely seemed plausible. I didn't work through any mock combats, though. Just reread the detailed examples in the rulebook.

I arrived at Keith's place earlier tonight feeling like I was about to explode my head. He had the scenario set up (as he always does – he's a great host) and after a bit of chat we got right down to things.

Keith had rather bad luck in this game, but we were simply using it for a learning experience. We only played one of the two turns in the scenario, but we learned more in those 90-105 minutes than the entire previous week. There's absolutely nothing that can top simply sitting down with the game and working through the situations to see what happens. You really get a feel for the big picture that you can't get pushing counters at home, or playing the games solo.

I do feel I prepared as well as I could have, however. There's just too much in the rulebooks to remember it all your first time out.

I'd go into a lot of the lessons we learned, but that really doesn't matter, as there's probably no more than one or two of you out there that cares about trace supply and when it's checked – it's the process of learning a big game that's important here. Given how things laid out, here's how I'd approach it next time (and this assumes my opponent is learning the game as well):

Familiarize yourself with the physical components first. Only refer to the rules when you want a definition for something on the counters or map.
Read through the rules, front to back. Don't worry if you don't "get" something.
Mentally walk through the sequence of play for a typical turn. This is particularly important in games where supply takes a major role. Learn when supply comes into play.
Scan the table of contents. Reread sections where you don't think you have good grasp of what's going on.
Pick a scenario (assuming there's more than one) and set it up. Look at the victory conditions and think about what each side needs to do.
Play a dry run. This is what Keith and I did earlier tonight. Play through with the intent of going after the victory conditions but don't try to optimize. Don't worry if three stacks of units suddenly disappear because you didn't understand the supply rules properly.
Write down questions as you play.
Reread the rules as soon as possible to try to catch things you didn't get the first time. This is where I go next. I'm sure I'll run across a lot of things that we missed or did wrong. I'll log them all, and we'll give it another go.

We're trying a larger scenario next time, and we'll only plan on doing one turn a night. Two if we're lucky. It's nine turns, and we meet every other week, so we should be done in, oh, late September or so.

18xx

For the other half of my "big game" fix, 18FL arrived today. Can't wait to get this on the table. John Tamplin (Deep Thought Games) does a fantastic job on his kits. His work is highly recommended.

Sunriffer Part 2: Half Turkey Games

2006-05-29T23:23:00.000-07:00

I will continue with my riffs on gaming inspired by our Sunriver retreat, but I will postpone the GIPFathon thoughts to another week. That topic deserves something more Appelclinesque than I can handle after a long holiday weekend.

I have become obsessed lately with this incessant thought about how much the Half Turkey sandwich represents the state of my life right now. We have a pretty decent cafeteria at work - at least the menu is rather frou-frou- but I am usually so busy with lunch meetings and all that, instead of sitting down to a nice warm White Globe Radish Enchilada with Balsamic Chive Salsa, I only have time to grab a pre-packaged Half Turkey sandwich. That, a packet of Dijon, a bag of Sun Chips, and a Diet Pepsi is enough to keep me going until my 6:30 supper. So what's so special about the Half Turkey? It can be bought, eaten and disposed of quickly. I do not have to worry about indigestion. It is not too messy, so I can eat while working. It is familiar. But most importantly, it is always unspectacular yet satisfying (contrast with ham or, especially, roast beef). In an environment that is becoming increasingly difficult for me to control, I have to establish these ports of secure sanity.

The Half Turkey concept extends beyond cuisine. In my PC gaming, instead of subjecting myself to figuring out Civ 4, I am content with Guild Wars (and I would fully regress to Diablo 2 if it could run on my current PC). I am spending almost no time with my more challenging music (classical; bebop; death metal; IDM), instead preferring genres that require less brain and more feeling (ambient; doom; drone; soul). Now, boardgaming is not a solitaire activity like the other hobbies mentioned here; I have to merge my own desires with those of others. However, I am less afraid these days to pull out the veto (although starting with a passive-aggressive shrug usually suffices). Some days, I just want to play the equivalent of a Half Turkey.

For me, a Half Turkey game must have the following qualities:

Be quick to setup, teach, and put away (although not necessarily play). An example of a favorite game that does not have these properties is Settlers of Catan.
Even better, everyone in the group knows how to play it, and never needs a refresher.
Have a very low chance of unsatisfying plays, the unpleasantness usually caused by randomness. Games that do not have these properties (a favorite being Die Sieben Siegel) may also swing the other way, but some days it is not worth the chance of frustration.

Titan: the Arena used to be the group's Half Turkey. It regularly got 5+ plays a year, but seemed to have been forgotten after a tsunami of new releases wiped out our memories. It has been making a comeback as of late, including this past retreat. Slowly since its release, San Juan has emerged as the group's new Half Turkey. There are some fussy parts that bother me - keeping track of which pile is the drawpile and which is the discards; forgetting to conceal the most recent trading table - but it has a groovy, light flow, while having enough there to make you feel satisfied if you win or come close.

Our three-player match at Sunriver was relatively dull. It was the rare match where the winner (me) had a Guild Hall but not a Palace but was still able to keep the builder(s) at bay. The best builder was using his Poor House every turn and was able to keep the game at a rapid pace, while the third player had the best setup - including a FAT chapel - but was unable to find a 6-point building (i.e., was unwilling to select the Councilor role).

Just for Dug, here is my list of Top Ten Half Turkey Games.

Katzenjammer Blues - Only six ranks - no suits - so there is not much complaining about luck of the draw. Partnership variant adds suspense and teamwork.
Titan: the Arena - Easy to accept that so much is out of your control.
San Juan - As long as I get dealt a Tobacco Storage.
Fist of Dragonstones - I find the continuous blind-bidding to be a bit ritualistic. That's good, right?
Heave Ho! - Token two-player entry. Joyous fun whether winning or losing.
Dragonland - Can play conservatively - get rings as early as possible - if you don't care much about outright winning. Scores are usually tight.
Domaine - Headier than others on this list, but the most replayable.
Metro - Even if you get hosed early, there is the delight of kingmaking.
Attila - Three-player only. Okay, maybe four.
Wyatt Earp - Would place higher except Hideout can be annoying, and disproportionate Wyatt Earp cards can throw things out of whack.

In honor of the Half Turkey sandwich, I should start a game publishing business some day called Half Turkey Games, targeting this specific niche. "Bring your own Sun Chips!"

1825, 18Mex, et al (or, Big Games Redux)

2006-05-25T14:09:00.000-07:00

As Eric mentioned in his post, we got in a game of 18Mex at Sunriver, and that was enough to bring to the fore Eric’s existing but (long?) dormant interest in the 18xx games in general – so much so that we got in a 2-player 1825 Unit 3 last Saturday. The 18xx series are the games I’ve missed the most since moving to Portland, as my Dallas game group used to play them quite regularly, and most of the folks here in Portland don’t have (or haven’t expressed) an interest in playing them. I’m glad that Eric, and to an unknown extent George as well, found it enjoyable enough to want to try more of them – I already own quite a few of these, and I’d really like to see them hit the table more often. Chris and KC have expressed some interest as well, so things seem to be looking up.

It will require some more pro-active planning to make this happen, as they tend to be longer than most of our weeknight fare – so they’re likely limited to weekends. I’m hopeful, though, that we’ll be able to make it happen.

What is it about these games that lead to the level of interest (obsession?) that they do? I enjoy them immensely for the following reasons:

Multi Player – I find that I much prefer multi-player games to 2-player ones, and the 18xx series in general is designed for 3-5 players (1825 Unit 3 being the only one strictly limited to 2, while a few other 18xx’s support 2 or more players). I find that I enjoy games with multiple opponents more than those with only 1 – partially this is due to enjoying the socializing that comes with that, but I also enjoy the game dynamic of multiple opponents.
Low (or No) Chance – 18xx’s are definitely low chaos games – in most, there aren’t any external random elements (such as dice or card draws). For the most part, other than the other player’s actions, you are responsible for your success or failure. If there is a chance element in a game, I prefer that there be something I, as a player, can do to mitigate its effects on my position. My acceptance of chance in some games is higher than others, but a general rule of thumb is my tolerance for luck is inversely proportional to the length of the game.
Development Over Time – I tend to like games that, even if I don’t win, my position has developed over time, and the 18xx series definitely has that element in spades. Personally, stock holdings grow in value and diversity as the game progresses. Companies I control as president I develop on the board – they grow their routes, manage their assets (trains, stations and $$, mostly), and hopefully improve their position on the board (never forgetting, though, that the goal in 18xx games is personal wealth, which is not at all the same thing as corporate wealth). Even in games where I don’t win (or, even, do particularly well) I can enjoy if I’ve developed my position from where I started.
Strong Theme or Story– while I won’t argue that the 18xx games are simulations, they are definitely fairly strongly themed, and it’s a theme I find engaging. There is an element of history and geographical development that I find interesting, and even if they don’t simulate history, they do encourage me to learn more about historical elements I might explore not otherwise (I feel the same way about some war games – Paths of Glory in particular inspired me to read more about WWI).
Reward Experience – by this I mean that several plays reveal more about the game, and how best to play it. In 18xx games, this comes into play in everything from which private companies to bid for (in those games that have auctions), which major corporations to open, and how to develop their routes for maximum value. The downside to this is that new players may have a difficult time their first few games, especially if they play against experienced players, and may, as a result, find that they don’t enjoy them (in the inverse of Cooley’s Law).

The games I prefer tend to include many of these components, although I’ve recently become much less dogmatic on the low chance issue than I once was. Other games that I think include most (if not all) of these elements include Ursuppe, El Grande, Euphrat & Tigris, the Ticket to Ride series, and I’m sure many others would come to mind if I spent more time thinking about it. The 18xx games are probably at the upper end of my length (in time) tolerance, but they grab my imagination well enough that that isn’t as much of a problem as it could be.

As Eric mentioned, we’re planning to attend the 18xx con in Portland in a couple of weeks (June 23-25^th) – it will definitely be nice having someone I know along, as well as someone who isn’t super-experienced (or super-obsessed) with the 18xx games. Hopefully Chris will be able to join us – I’ll be sure to let you know how that goes!

Until next week, happy gaming!

Big Games

2006-05-23T16:20:00.000-07:00

This is a bit of a short column this week as things have been a bit busy with Megan catching a rather bad cold and work being rather busy. It's also sort of a carry-on from last week's column and a continuation of my primary gaming theme nearly the entire calendar year.

Must play more big games.

18xx

After the 18MEX game played at Sunriver, Tim and I had been talking about getting some more 18xx games on the table. An opportunity presented itself last Saturday night – Tim came over after Megan went to bed, and we played 1825 Unit 3, an 18xx game designed for two players only. (It also links on to 1825 Units 1 and 2 to handle more players if you want.) 1825 has a linear stock market, not the two-dimensional one common to many of the games. There's also a few tweaks to differentiate itself. It's certainly one of the friendlier 18xx games.

Well, as expected Tim schooled me. Final scores were 7200 to 3550 or something like that. It was mostly a few early decisions that caused my demise. I'll improve on these with more experience, particularly with multiple playings of the same game. There's a few skills that seem to be applicable to any 18xx game, and a few that are unique to each game. It's just going to take time to learn how these things work. And I'm very eager to get my butt handed back to me a few more times – I'm trying to get these games on the table as frequently as possible. Which, given real life, won't be as often as I'd like.

Tim and I are planning on hitting the 18xx convention in Portland late next month. It'll be nice going with someone who likes these games but doesn't necessarily live them. (Though I'll admit to being a tad obsessed with them right now.) I hope to have at least one, maybe two more plays under my belt by then.

OCS

In 7 days, Keith and I will be playing an OCS scenario for the first time. (DAK2 scenario 7.3 – Sidi Barrani Tr'ng) This is a two-turn scenario set in early December 1940. This is a game I've been wanting to play for a long time, so I'm pretty eager to get going. The problem is, how do you really learn a game like this beforehand? As Keith and I only get to play every other week or so, we want to be as efficient as possible. I've read through the rules (43 pages of series rules plus 20 pages of game-specific rules) but it's really only going to work walking through it. So, I'm going to get the scenario set up tonight and try to do a solo walkthrough of a turn over the next few days.

I'll be keeping a log of how things go – if it turns out okay, it'll form one of my columns next month. If not, it'll appear on my neglected personal blog. In either case, the plan is to learn the game face to face and play longer scenarios over email. The turn flow is very conducive to email play, and there's apparently a pretty good Aide de Camp gamebox for it.

It would be a dream to play the full campaign face to face, but I don't think even Keith has the space to keep a 10foot by 3foot game set up in his basement for a number of years. Which is probably how long it would take us to play it. (Figure an hour or two per turn, 240 turns. And we only play every other week. Even two turns per session would take over four and a half years.)

Thankfully, there's a large number of smaller scenarios in the box. And we've each got Tunisia as well which contains six more scenarios.

Hopefully, this turns into something like 18xx where the play matches up to the early expectations. Can I be that lucky twice in a row?

Sunriffer: Part 1

2006-05-22T14:24:00.000-07:00

There have already been reports of this spring's Sunriver retreat posted by Dug, Eric, Tim, and George. Instead of just running through the list of games again, I thought I would use the setting as a framework for various gaming-related thoughts that have been going through my head lately. In the spirit of "something is better than nothing", I'll stretch these out over the next few weeks.

My Spirit... Has Been Buh-roken

This past week has been a very emotional one for me:

Something bad and rare happened to the project I manage at work. Nothing fatal, but it will take months to restore the face. I'll just leave it at that.
Elliott Yamin got voted off of American Idol. Surprisingly, this was the most emotional for me of all of the items in this list. I guess that I just see a lot of myself in him (other than my not being a diabetic Jew from central Virginia singing old-school soul music). This man has overcome so much to get so far, and yet has maintained an amazing attitude throughout. It was sad to see him give up in the penultimate round, but, by deciding to go out on the obscure "I Believe to My Soul", it was good to see him take a stand for why he was there in the first place.
The Spurs staved off elimination twice in a row to force a game 7 tonight. Given the previous two events, I was convinced that the trifecta was going to happen. [Edit: Urgh. The gods are cruel, prolonging it like that.]
My daughter has gone through a serious mental growth spurt, becoming a full-fledged toddler with barely a trace of the baby girl I first met a year ago.
My parents sold my childhood home in order to move to a smaller, more manageable setting. I haven't been there in years, and it is unsettling to realize that I will never walk through the back acre of woods again. Having to raise my daughter in a high-density living environment makes it even tougher to wrestle with.

I was thinking last night about how unemotional I am when it comes to boardgaming. I have always said that there are hundreds of musical pieces that mean more to me than my favorite boardgame (still luv ya, Taj!), but nowadays it seems ever more so such a flat hobby. The only other thing in my life that is as uninspiring is solving pencil puzzles. I still very much enjoy the time spent gaming; perhaps it is just that I am at a stage where I am seeking more sources of inspiration and emotion.

As I see it, there are only three lines of growth in playing boardgames (omitting the creativity found in design work): mental stretching (along only one axis of the intellectual space); human interaction; and managing the adrenalin that comes from competition. When you sample from a wide repertoire - including a steady influx of new games - like our group does, you largely lose the latter two, leaving you with the first which has no real emotional component to it. I contend that continually playing with family and/or friends in such a manner is as stunting as a regular diet of television. In any case, boardgaming for me these days serves primarily as a distraction from other things in my life, a way to lose myself in an isolated vacuum; my upcoming cigarette break, my past Disneyland vacation.

The ratio of Top Shelf / Thumbs Up / Thumbs Down games I played at Sunriver (6/11/5) was more favorable than my ratings at BGG (51/137/83), and I tended to find blemishes in my favorites while searching for positive elements in those seemingly unfavorable. Overall, there were more ponderous games played than in past retreats, whereas I prefer frivolity.

A rundown of what I played is listed below. '+' = Top Shelf, '0' = Thumbs Up, '-' = Thumbs Down. A '+' or '-' after a slash indicates a threat to move up or down to the next level. A '*' indicates a provisional rating I wish not to commit to yet; if a '-' or '-/+' rating if marked as such, I usually have no desire to revisit the game to remove the provisional status. Games in bold font indicate victory (lone or shared) on my part.

GIPF: -
TAMSK: o
DVONN: o/+
ZERTZ: o
YINSH: +
PUNCT: -*
The First World War: -*
Anno 1503: o
Dragonland: +
Die Sieben Siegel: +
Die Sieben Siegel: +
San Juan: o
Ursuppe: +
Schnäppchen Jagd: o
Alexander the Great: o*
Big Manitou: -/+*
Air Baron: +
Schnäppchen Jagd: o
Ticket to Ride - Märklin Edition: 0
Marco Polo Expedition: o
Katzenjammer Blues (Partnership): +
Power Grid: o
Bolide: *
Tower of Babel: -/+*
Magna Grecia: o/+

Err Baron

I have played Air Baron several times, and almost every time with the advanced rules. In our match at Sunriver, I got a big ORD payoff after the initial buildup, giving me enough cash to go into Fare Wars. After a string of good luck gave me control over the ATL hub, I decided to press my luck and take the inexpensive but valuable DFW hub. I might have played more conservatively, but Chuck was looking pretty strong as well, so I went for it. After getting the first three cheap spokes, and with one more in the way of ensuing victory, I hit my Waterloo: Memphis, Tennessee. I attacked the space on my next turn, and once more got a bum die roll. Because of my earlier success, all five event chips were in the draw cup, and soon enough I got hit by Fuel Hike. With little cash on hand, I had to sell off most of what I had to pay off the 10% of my market share. Chuck had just taken out a loan, so he was able to cover.

At this point, all of us had low market share, but there were still five event markers in the cup! I never anticipated this situation before, even though it seems obvious now; it is easy to forget how brutal a Fuel Hike can be. This meant that a high percentage of draws were events, but we didn’t have the cashflow to keep up with it. A succession of Crashes, Strikes, and more Fuel Hikes continued to beat the trailers down. We said that we would quit and hand the victory to the game system if Chuck got below 100 market share, but he managed to tread water and finally break through to victory during a lull of the chaos, with the rest of us scrambling respectably out of bankruptcy or near it.

I thought that I took a reasonable chance, but surely my reckless pay dragged down the game for everyone. Was it my fault, or a flaw in the design that a player has a right to exploit? Knowing it is there, how will I approach the same situation in the future? Also, if an opponent faces the situation, how will I attempt to manipulate their behavior? How much should one allow the thematic context affect these decisions? Will the threat of the situation cause one to avoid the game altogether, or will the group adopt house rules to deal with it? If we reach it again, will we decide on the same "stalemate" end conditions, or come up with something else? This is another example of the type of discussions that bring fascination to my gaming life.

Next week: More on the GIPFathon; and how I blundered in two of my favorite games.

Keep Your Enemies Closer

2006-05-17T13:26:00.000-07:00

I am now free to reveal that, as a direct result of the slappage I gave out to the Dice Tower podcast lo these many weeks ago, I was asked to contribute a regular segment. It is called "Fun With Mr. Whiney," and it debuts in Episode #51, alternately titled "Everything You Know Is Wrong."

Despite the obvious irony (which I love), I'm looking forward to contributing up to 3 minutes of unadulterated bile. In general, I've tried to keep this out of my posts on this blog (go ahead, Mr. Anonymous, take your cheap shot), but now I can wax annoyed on purpose, although I strive to use my indoor voice. I've already sent in five segments to Tom, and he appears to be pleased with the general content. The first segment he chose was, appropriately, "Why I Hate Top Ten Lists."

I'm not sure how long I'll be able to keep up a weekly rant without starting to sound like I'm repeating myself, so feel free to give me any ideas of things that drive you crazy in the gaming industry. No cow too sacred, no topic sacrosanct. As long as it's about gaming, of course, I save the religio-politico-socio commentary for the disclaimer, and that's all mine, baby.

As such, and since I've ended up taking on a couple of extra creative-type jobs for the summer, I'm unlikely to be posting often to this blog, although I've still reserved Wednesdays, especially if a topic occurs to me. It's not so much the typing, it's coming up with something "interesting" to say. By that I mean, of course, interesting to me. Because I'm Mr. Whiney. Nyah.

Anyway, check out the show. I'm not sure that all of the other folks Tom has lined up to do segments have "radio voices" (hint: compression and EQ work wonders in post-production, but you still need to sound like you've been awake for more than a few minutes if you want to keep anyone's attention), but the audience will help him decide what works and what doesn't. And of course, that includes me, the controversy-creating portion of the show, so by all means tell Tom how upset you are that I'm given any air time at all.

And Now, Back to Our Regularly Scheduled Gathering Games Review

2006-05-17T12:43:00.000-07:00

First, I apologize for being later with this than I had hoped - dinner out last night went quite late (although it was at a very good - and, apparently, authentic - Chinese restaurant, so it was quite worth it), and I've been in training at work, so my brain has been a bit full.

With that said, though, one of the reasons I joined the Blog was because I'd had a chance to try out quite a few new games at that OTHER Gathering in Ohio, and I wanted to share some of my opinions. I didn't get a chance to play all of the new stuff that was available, but I did get a chance to try most of the big names - I'm going to focus on the ones I enjoyed (mostly because I'm not interested in writing about the ones I didn't).

The general consensus at the Gathering was that there weren't any real blockbusters - in general, I agree with this, although I thought there where quite a few games that, while not crossing the threshold of greatness are were, at least, into the realm of the very good.

Thurn und Taxis was my favorite new releases - it's a middle-weight game, and, like many German games isn't strongly themed. The theme here is building postal routes in and around Germany. The game does allow for some strategy, both in card selection and in placement on the board. It also had the advantage of being quite quick - I think typical playing time of the 3 games I played was an hour or less (probably closer to 45 minutes). I enjoyed this one each time I played it, although I haven't played since the Gathering, so I've not played frequently enough to have an opinion on the "first player advantage" issue I've seen discussed. This one is definitely going onto the wish list, and I'd give it (after 3 plays) a solid 7 on the BGG scale.

Augsburg 1520 was the best heavier game I played. The theme here is players are bankers in, oddly enough, Augsburg (I presume circa 1520). Through collecting the appropriate cards, you seek to provide loans to the different members of the royal family - the real goal being the influence that comes from having the royals in your debt (literally). The heart of the game is a rather unique auction system, that combines bidding numbers of cards (so sets of the same type are worth quite a bit), with using the values of the cards themselves to break ties if people bid the same size set. The other element is that you must develop your personal economy to bring in enough money to buy cards from the set you receive - you use your influence with the Royals to move up the social ladder (with corresponding improvements to your income, or ability to collect cards). I only got a chance to play this one once, but I'm very interested in trying it again - so I give it a provisional thumbs-up, and a provisonal 8 rating.

Nottingham is a game I've not heard mentioned to often, although I liked it quite a bit. It's definitely pretty light - and judging from other peoples comments also depended on a group willing to enjoy a game with a fair bit of chaos - but I found it enjoyable. It's again lightly themed (Robin Hood, as you might imagine), but what it really is is a set collecting game, with the different valued cards also having a "power" to them - for example, one of the values lets you steal a card from an opponent, should it be the one you draw. The ambush cards (one of the other cards power) allow another player to steal someones attempt to lay down a meld - unless the other player lays down a meld larger than what would normally be required. Worth a look if your group enjoys light, fun card games - but this game would definitely lose it's luster if players draw out their turns. I really enjoyed this, and would rate it a 7.

California was another game I really enjoyed, although I must admit a general bias in favor of Michael Schacht's games (Kardinal & König is one of my favorite games, and I also enjoy Hansa quite a bit). It's another quick, fairly light game about accumulating "things", and hence attracting people to your house - you get points if you attract more than one other person (e.g. you have a party at your place to show off your stuff). There are bonus scorings for particular sets of things, and a unique "bidding" mechanism, where on your turn, you may buy one of the things on offer, or take money - but by taking money, you reduce the price the other players will pay on their turn. Another one that is on the wishlist. I give California an 8.

These were my favorite games of the Gathering - I may spend some time next week talking about other games I liked, or I may go off in anothe direction (I'm still pondering that issue).

Until then, happy gaming!

Sunriver After Effects

2006-05-16T12:25:00.000-07:00

So, as it is with miniatures conventions, the Sunriver gaming retreat has sparked interest on at least a couple fronts for me.

18xx

The 18MEX game Tim, Doug, George, and I got in really confirmed that I'm going to like these games. Yes, they're long, but they've mostly got a good game arc and provide a lot of decision points along the way. I also really get the feeling of developing and building something – not unlike the feeling I get playing Roads and Boats. I finished last in our 18MEX game at Sunriver, but I think I know the major decision I made wrong – paying out dividends one time too many thus shorting a company treasury and not having the money to buy a train after the "2"s rusted. Having more experience will help me refine those timing decisions.

I've done a solo walkthrough of 1860 and botched a handful of rules while doing it (you can't build two yellow tiles if you build one with a large station, for example) but got a feel for how a linear stock market works as opposed to the 2d stock market in 18MEX. Of course with these games, you can learn how to play them solo, but you can only learn how to play them well playing against more experienced players. So, Tim's going to come over and school me on either 1825 Unit 3 or 18Scan.

Racing Games

This will be the subject of a later column when I return to the sports theme, but I thought Bolide played very cleanly. It's got about the same amount of luck as Speed Circuit, but is less deterministic. Looks better, too. I'm really curious how this would play with 7-8 people and the egg timer. (It looks to be a 30-second timer, but I haven't checked.) I can see this easily clocking in under 2 hours with those conditions.

Of course, this has sparked interest in other racing games, as well. I still need to get my hands on Um Reifenbreite, Das Motorsportspeil, TurfMaster, and a couple others. More to come in this space.

OCS

This isn't a direct result of Sunriver, but Keith and I have talked about getting the Operation Compass scenario from DAK2 on the table. Now's the time to start planning. It's a 6-turn scenario, but I can imagine our first turn or two taking an evening each as we both get used to the amazing amount of stuff contained in these games.

Burma is going back into print (it's new on the MMP preorder list) so I'll be getting my copy eventually. There's seven games in this series, and I've got the only two currently in print. I don't have high need to get the OOP ones, so I'll just preorder them when MMP gets around to reprinting them and pick them up that way.

These are definitely the most playable "monster" wargames I've seen. Lots to do, but it all makes sense and the designer (Dean Essig) is very accessible for questions.

I expect that Keith and I will begin our foray here sometime in June.

iPod

I need to get an iPod model bigger than the shuffle I currently have. The ability to just plop your iPod down on the dock and your music is up and running is fantastic. Yes, I'm behind the curve here, but I've never really had the need for anything like this. At home away from the computer, we've got XM over DirecTV. At home on the computer, I obviously don't need the iPod. At work I either listen to mp3s or stream Groove Salad from Somafm.com. In the SUV, we've got Sirius. The only places where I don't really have a good solution are in the car (cd/am/fm only) and events like Sunriver.

So while there isn't a screaming need for one (or I'd already own it) the increasing capabilities in the product line plus an existing infrastructure in the gaming group means it's probably time to get one. Plus, they're pretty damn cool.

It was interesting hearing the different music selections at Sunriver. Though I probably heard a bit too much death metal for my tastes during a weekend of gaming requiring concentration. It probably hit me the most during the Air Baron game. But, I didn't bring anything, so I'm at the mercy of what others brought. (Note: I don't have a problem with death metal, but it's not music conducive to learning new games.)

Miniatures

Events have conspired to make Enfilade! a bit too much trouble this year, so I won't be getting the mental bump to get things painted like usual. However, a side effect of rearranging the house in preparation for our baby boy due to arrive in August, is making me focus on what I expect to work on soon. So, the 6mm Great Northern War, 10mm Marlburian, and 15mm WWII North African figures stay in the hobby room – the rest go to storage. Or on sale.

The nice part about this rearrangement is that it will force me to concentrate on one project at a time. All too often, I suffer from wargamer's ADD and have multiple projects on the painting table simultaneously.

Tools of the Trade 3: Playing Cards

2006-05-13T11:28:00.000-07:00

This is the third in a series of unknown length about making game prototypes. Today's session: making playing cards that look nice and hold up reasonably well for playtesting.

Company Plug. I’m happy to say our new Havoc Expansion is currently the number one seller at Funagain, and Havoc itself is selling at number three. Funagain just had a big sale that a bunch of our play group got in on, so I’m sure our games will not stay on top for long, but it was fun while it lasted.

PRINTING ON CARD STOCK
This is the most typical way I print cards for prototypes. They’re going to come out with plain white backs (some options below), and they will be fairly easy to shuffle and play. They will not resist water, and with hard play they will get bent, etc. I use Classic Crest cover stock, “solar white” color, letter size, medium weight (it says “Sub 80 216 g/m/m 28.76M” on the package.)

Here’s an example of the cards I did for an early version of Havoc: the Hundred Years War. I use Adobe Illustrator and InDesign for professional print work. But for everyday prototypes, Powerpoint works fine. I have a basic setup for 9 cards per page (1 of the three lines shown here). You can see how each card has a narrow black border, rounded corners (rounded at the same radius as Magic: the Gathering) and are fairly easy to read. Possibly you can also see a thin blue line that separates the cards – that’s the cutting line marker.

Preparation.
Print the cards directly on card stock. Sometimes it’s smart to do a test print in black and white on regular paper to make sure everything looks good. Card stock isn’t that expensive, but if you have a lot to print making sure they’ll look good makes sense.

Cutting.
For decent prototypes, I just use a pair of heavy shears (scissors) and cut the cards out one at a time, starting with longer straight lines for efficiency. One level up in quality is to use a straight edge with razor knife or rotary blade to cut the edges. If you’re careful, this method allows you to go much faster. However, in the long run I don’t find that the cards produced that way are that much better than hand cutting; but that may speak to my habit of making razor cuts slightly off line!

OPTIONS
Backs.
If you want a non-white or prettier back for your cards, you can print the reverse side of the card stock directly. If you go this way, I recommend a semi-random back, like the background in the cards shown above. With no repeatable pattern, you don’t have to line the cards up with the back image. To do this I print the backs first, a straight 7.7 x 8.3 inch image or as big as my printer will print. Thay way when I print the cards on the reverse side, each card is covered edge to edge with a color back.

Laminating.
You can laminate cards for a longer pasting product. Since you’ll be cutting these cards out, make sure the laminate sticks to the image after the card stock is cut. There are peel-and-stick laminates for this, and you probably want to laminate both sides to keep the cards from curling too much. I think they’re a bit harder to shuffle this way, but they do last.

PRINTING ON LABEL STOCK
Last article, I talked about using peel-and-stick full page labels for game tiles. Same general principles apply here. The Avery standard numbers are 5165, 5265 and 8165 so anything compatible with them should work pretty well.

This time though, the size of the card is made to exactly fit on a standard black bordered CCG card, like Magic: the Gathering, Wyvern, etc. We have tons of commons for these games lying around. The label stock fits right over the entire graphic portion of the CCG card, and our black border melts into their black border. With thin label stock, the resulting cards shuffle and play well, and they are even-edged with a color back.

Below are three cards from a sample game based on the movie Caddyshack. This uses the same template as above, but note how each card has a lot more information. Again it’s 9 cards per page, done in Powerpoint. And if it were a real game, we’d need to get HBO’s approval to use the movie images.

This is sort of a standard CCG approach, with a card title, graphic in the upper middle, text below, and numbers or game information in the corners, plus at the bottom and left side in this sample. This is printed on full-page label stock, then the cards are cut out, stripped of their backing and mounted on the CCG card.

Printing.
Print the card images (color or whatever) on regular 8.5 x 11 full page labels. Test the paper once it’s printed to see if the image will hold up under use – rub it with your thumb or something. If the print is frail at all, you can laminate your tile after it’s stuck to the backing.

Cutting.
Same as earlier, I prefer plain scissors, but straight edge and knife or rotary works fine. The main difference here is I often try to curve the corner a little (following the rounded edge) so it will drop more easily onto the CCG card face.

Adhering.
Peel off the label for one card backing carefully and expose an edge (like ¼ inch) of the label. Place the CCG card (face up) behind the exposed sticky edge and arrange it so the printed image will cover the original card art all the way around. Carefully peel the label backing in a straight line away from your exposed edge, smoothing the sticky label image onto the card face as you go. You don’t want air bubbles under the image.

AN OPTION: CARD SLEEVES
I don’t use these much, but some other designers swear by them. I tend to use sleeves if I have a game (like New Eden) where I’m actually changing some cards almost every playtest. In that case, using sleeves to quickly try out other card ideas works well.

On the down side, I find that card sleeves made for CCG’s are not that easy to shuffle, are sometimes prone to splitting, and are often expensive. One can make the argument that one set of sleeves can be used for multiple prototypes. However, I carry around 5 or 6 prototypes at a time, so I wouldn’t want to do that much switching in and out typically.

Preparation.
Print the card images directly on card stock or even regular paper. Cut the images out (you can go fast, since these images only need to fit inside the sleeve.) Place the images face-up in the sleeves. If you want a more solid card, you can place a regular CCG card behind your prototype image. The resulting card has a nice back, looks nice on the table and has a nice solid feel to it.

Next time – I’ll run through my card ideas and see if I missed anything with this first attempt. If not, we'll move on to printing game boards and maps.

Burndown Update, Battleground: Fantasy Warfare

2006-05-12T15:36:00.000-07:00

Things are looking good on the unplayed games burndown – quite a bit of progress since my last update. I’ve managed some very focused spurts of activity to knock these down, plus the Ginn family visit and Ken’s willingness to play anything have put me back on track to finish this year.

It also helps that I’ve been purchasing fewer unplayed games this year than in the past three. The highest rated unplayed games still on my to-play list are 1830, Battlestations, Liberte, Diplomacy, History of the World, Starship Catan, and Britannia. All but Starship Catan are big, long games that will take some sincere effort to get played. Fortunately I have a willing gaming group.

If you listen to The Dice Tower, you’ve been inundated with infomercials about Battleground: Fantasy Warfare. The last 2 or 3 shows I’ve heard (I like the show much more than, ahem, Dug does. Though I suspect his attitude will change soon) have had very detailed descriptions of the game, different races, and gushing enthusiasm for the game. I trust Tom’s opinion on this and the game sounds interesting enough to buy without trying it first. So I did yesterday in a big group purchase over at Funagain.

I picked up the Elves and the Orcs, as I think they are two decent races to start with and get the boys interested. The idea of a miniatures game without the painting or collecting is appealing, but I have no idea if we’ll like it or not. I’m only putting $40 at risk to find out, a smaller price than I’d pay getting into Warhammer or something similar. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Speaking of the Ginn family, Jim asked me this week how much it would cost to go to Essen. This was in response to my statement that Essen wasn’t that much more expensive than going to BGG.Con given the expensive hotel costs (about $650 for me – I didn’t share a room). I did some asking around (my numbers were skewed last year because of the family trip and extended travel in southern Germany) and the consensus is about $1400 – $2000 total not including game purchases. This assumes you can get a flight over there for about $800, which seems likely again this year. I’ll be going solo this year (meaning without family, but with a big crowd from Portland) and am excited about returning.

It’s About The People . . .

2006-05-11T11:56:00.000-07:00

This past weekend I attended (with my wife) our groups gaming retreat in Sunriver, OR (near Bend, for those not up on their central Oregon geography). This was my first Sunriver, and I had a blast – Dug seems to have the hosting down to a science (or so it seemed to me). It was great to get in as many games as I did, but more importantly, it was fun to have a chance to game with some of the members of the group I don’t see regularly. I played mostly games I’ve played previously, although I did get in one game that was completely new to me, and another that was just recently released that I’d played once or twice previously but is still fairly new.

Last week I promised to “compare and contrast” our Sunriver retreat (the nickname for which gave this blog it’s name) and that OTHER Gathering held annually in Ohio (I am, of course, referring to the Gathering of Friends). The main thing of note is that, while gaming is certainly an important part of the time spent at both, by far more important is having the chance to enjoy the company of people with whom you share (at least) a common interest.

A frequent theme in other reports from The Gathering of Friends (aka GoF) is “it’s the people, more than the games” – let me add my voice to that chorus, as it’s certainly one of the main appeals to me. In this regard, Sunriver was similar to the GoF – although with people I’ve gamed with previously (mostly). Sunriver WAS significantly smaller - this years GoF had ~320 total attendees, while I believe the high count of people at Sunriver was just a bit over 10 folks. I can imagine the atmosphere at Sunriver being similar to some of the very first Gatherings (the first year was ~20 folks or so, I believe) - a small group of people who already know each other.

Another difference of note is the presence of a significant number of Europeans at the GoF – this includes designers, game company representatives and the like, but also a good sized contingent who are enthusiastic game players there to enjoy gaming (and get a chance to try the new releases as well). This lends a different feel to the GoF, since if you have a new game with rules only in German, you can usually find someone to translate for you! One of my more enjoyable GoF memories was getting the chance to play King Arthur – it’s an electronic game that will talk to you as you reach certain locations with your pieces, but all the dialogue is in German. One of my friends from Austria (thanks, Bernhard) was kind enough to act as the translator for the game, and I know I’m grateful to have gotten the chance to give the game a try, as it was enjoyable (and the “gadget” factor of the game just added to it).

Needless to say, the only Europeans we had at Sunriver were those who live here in the NW and game with us regularly (I'm looking at you, George!).

But The Games Matter Too

This brings me to the games – the GoF is different from Sunriver in the presence of newer games – sometimes even ones that haven’t yet been released generally, but usually the latest batch from the most recent Essen and Nuremburg fairs. This has pro’s and con’s – I enjoy getting the chance to try new games before making the decision to buy, however it’s fairly common for some rules to be misread, and then taught to others with the original misread propagated.

With a smaller gathering like Sunriver, we rely on the games members of our local group already own – this isn’t much of a hardship, as tastes vary enough in this group that most games (of any substance) end up in the hands of somebody. While we were missing some of the “newest” games from Nuremburg (like Thurn und Taxis), we had a copy of Ticket to Ride: Märklin that I know got played at least once (because I was in that game). So the end result is that, for the most part, the games played at Sunriver are games that are already familiar (to at least one of the participants).

They're Similar, But Different

I really enjoy the Gathering of Friends, for the chance to catch up with friends that I only see once a year, and for the chance to play recently released games. I try to attend every year (I've not missed one yet, since my first one in 2000), even if only for a few days, as it really is a great time.

Sunriver was a lot of fun as well, for the chance to get to know the other RipCityGamer’s better, and the opportunity to play some longer games that don’t (or can’t) come out on weeknights. I'll certainly be making an effort to make it to future Sunriver retreats!

I hope there is room in my schedule for both events in the future!

So what games did I play at Sunriver? See below!

Friday
Ingenious - Very nice abstract, Knizia at his finest
Hacienda - Newer Kramer game, enjoyable
Fury of Dracula - Used to enjoy the old one, still enjoy the new one

Saturday
Ursuppe - One of my favorite longer Euros
Railroad Tycoon - I don't like Age of Steam, but I enjoy this "simplification"
Schnäppchen Jagd - with 3 players, a great trick-taking game
San Juan - Probably the closest game of this I've ever played
Circus Minimus - Dice hate me, this game had lots of 'em. Not my thing.

Sunday
Ticket to Ride - Märklin Edition - My favorite of the TtR series so far
18MEX - My chance to introduce the RipCityGamers to 18xx games . . . long, but good.

With that, I've rambled enough - I'll try and have some reviews of the newer games I got a chance to play at the GoF next week.

Until then - happy gaming!

A First Look Back at a First Sunriver

2006-05-09T12:26:00.000-07:00

I get the lucky break of being the first to post on the past weekend's Sunriver extravaganza. I wrote the bulk of this Monday night a few hours after returning.

This was the first Sunriver gaming retreat I've been able to attend. It most certainly won't be the last, and it reinforces my desire to attend more of this type of gathering.

I rode along with George for the four-hour drive out to Doug's family's house in Sunriver, arriving around 2pm on Friday. Doug and Dave had arrived the night before, so after unloading the car and unwinding for a bit, we dove right into the gaming. I pretty much didn't stop for nearly three solid days (except for some sleep, of course...)

From 2pm Friday through 11am on Monday (when Dave, George, and I started heading out) I played 18 games. That might not seem like a whole heck of a lot until you see some of the games I played...

Friday

The weekend started off with a clunker. As we knew others were arriving relatively soon, we wanted to try something shorter (~90 minutes). We chose First World War, the newish Phalanx game on WWI designed by Ted Raicer (designer of Paths of Glory among others.) Ugh. I don't think I'll be trying this one again. Abstracted to the point of uselessness, really. I know Phalanx is trying to provide lighter, euro-wargame hybrids, but this game really can't decide which it is. And it doesn't do either well.

After Matt, Alex, and Mike arrived, we pulled out Saboteur. Dave had gone to the store, so six of us were playing. Matt won rather easily, and pretty much everyone enjoyed it (as far as I know). Tim, Carrie, Chuck, and Jodi all arrived while we were playing so the full complement was present from this point on.

My big game for Friday was the new Britannia published by Fantasy Flight. I'd never played the original, but it had always hung around the lists of games I was going to try and/or buy. This deserves a better session report, but I ended up finishing second by two points (243/241/236/191) when my last Saxon unit was killed on nearly the final die roll of the game. If he had survived, I would have won by two instead.

After dinner, I got in a game of Hacienda and two plays of Die Sieben Siegel. Hacienda surprised me – it was better than I expected. I might be buying this one. DSS played very cleanly. It's a great trick-taking game.

So Friday's summary: six games played, zero wins.

Saturday

I had a bit of a slow start as I was attempting to sleep in the same room as the Fury of Dracula marathon that stopped sometime after 1am. While they were finishing up in the morning, I got set up for our three-player Here I Stand tournament scenario session. Chuck (France/Ottoman), Doug (Hapsburg/Papacy) and I (England/Protestant) played this three-turn version. (which still took us around four hours) I pulled off the win in the last turn by managing to father an heir (a sickly Edward VI) and converting a number of English spaces to the Church of England. Final scores were England 23, Ottomans 22, France 20, Protestants 20, Hapsburg 18, Papacy 17.

After that, I jumped into a Railroad Tycoon game. I hadn't actually played this to completion yet, and enjoyed it. This is definitely a choice over Age of Steam if you've already fried your brain. Finished 3rd out of four in this one – probably should have built in the west sooner. I really wish they could have sorted out the color issues on this one – the constant confusion over blue and purple is annoying.

A quick game of San Juan followed. This might have been the tightest 4-player contest I've seen. Final scores were 36(2), 36(1), 36(0), and 31. I ended up winning by one card in hand over Alex who managed to build three 6-buildings and a Library when his only production building the entire game was the initial Indigo Plant. It was quite impressive to see.

After dinner, Chuck and I played a quick game of Twilight Struggle. Quick in that I got hammered by a Soviet auto-win on turn 4. I never really got anything going my way in that game. Frustrating, but that happens in card games some times.

The post-dinner game that night, for me, was Air Baron. Dave, Mike, Chuck and I rode the ups and downs of incredible luck swings in this game. At one point, Dave was two successful takeovers from winning, and fell all the way to last. We nearly called the game and gave the victory to the system. In the end, Chuck perservered and won, scoring more points than the rest of us combined.

Around 10pm or so, we started a game of Die Macher, knowing we'd only get a couple turns in. We stopped around 11:30 or so and crashed.

Saturday summary: five games completed, two wins.

Sunday

This was promising to be a good day. Any day when you start by playing Die Macher during breakfast can't be a bad one, can it?

Starting around 8:00 or so we resumed the Die Macher game. I was in the lead after the big, 80-point third election (Westphalia) and matched nearly the entire National platform, but my platform didn't really match (and in one case directly opposed) any of the remaining elections. I was unable to fully manipulate things to my advantage, doing poorly in most of the remaining elections – this also meant the National platform was falling away from me, and I ended up only matching two of the five opinions in the end. I fell to fourth as Chuck ran away with things. Only being able to get into two coalitions the entire game really hurt me. It's critical in a five-player game.

By the time that ended (around 10am or so), Tim had pulled out 18MEX, one of the entry-level games in the 18xx family. I own two of them (1860 and 1856), but had never played any before so I jumped at the opportunity. It took a while to work through the explanations, etc. but we got things limping along. Tim has played this one before, and has played a handful of other games in the system, so he won as expected. I really enjoyed the experience, though, and am very happy I got to play. I'm really looking forward to getting some of these games on the table now, but opportunities are slim. We called this one just before we were likely to break the bank as Tim and Carrie had to get going. I finished last (by only $30 or so behind George) but loved the game.

By this time, there were only four of us left. Dave, Doug, George, and I. (Yes, we were the first ones to arrive, and the last to leave.) We pulled out Power Grid, and played the France map. It was the usual close jockeying for position. Late in the game, I made the mistake of competing with Doug for garbage (against my initial inclination) and it cost me. I believe I would have won the game had I taken a different route, but I'll never know. Instead finished last as I was unable to power my garbage plant on the final two turns due to Doug buying out all the garbage on me. I love this game. I've never had even a luke-warm experience playing it. Always great.

After the four of us went out to dinner at the local grill, we came back to give Bolide a shot. This is a new racing game by an Italian publisher and it has a very novel momentum-based movement system. There is nearly zero luck in the game. I'll be devoting some space to it in a future column on racing games. Suffice it to say, I really enjoy the game but you really need to use the supplied egg timer or it just drags on too long. We only ran one lap and it took just over two hours. That said, we rarely had to refer to the rulebook – the game is simple, but takes a while to figure out how to manipulate your way around the corners. I like this one a lot – will need to try it again.

We capped the day off with Tower of Babel. Eh. It's not bad, and I'd like to play it again, but I don't feel the urge to own it.

Sunday summary: five games, 1 win, 3 last places.

Monday

This was a short day as I needed to get home before five – which meant leaving before noon. We only got two games in – Money! (the card-based bidding game) and Magna Grecia. Nearly caught Dave in the latter as I never sold a single market the entire game.

So... final tally – 18 games, three wins. Eight of the 18 games I played were new to me: First World War, Britannia, Hacienda, Air Baron, 18MEX, Bolide, Tower of Babel, and Money!. Four of the games were 4+ hour sessions (Brittania, Here I Stand, Die Macher, and 18MEX.) I only played one game I didn't like (First World War) and one I'm unsure about playing again (Air Baron).

Doug's hospitality was fantastic. Many years of running this retreat has seemingly fine-tuned the logistics. Many thanks to his generosity and enthusiasm.

Here's the list of games I played, approximate play time, my final position, and their BGG rank.

First World War, 60 minutes, 2nd (of 4), 1077
Saboteur, 30 minutes, 5th (of 6), 557
Britannia, 4.5 hours, 2nd (of 4), 168
Hacienda, 60 minutes, last, 131
Die Sieben Siegel (twice) 90 minutes, 3rd/last, 258
Here I Stand, 4.5 hours, 1st (of 3), 200
Railroad Tycoon, 2 hours, 3rd (of 4), 23
San Juan, 45 minutes, 1st (of 4), 31
Twilight Struggle, 60 minutes, last, 21
Air Baron, 2 hours, 2nd (of 4), 781
Die Macher, 4.5 hours, 4th (of 5), 7
18MEX, 6 hours, last, N/A
Power Grid, 2 hours, last, 4
Bolide, 2 hours, 1st (of 4), 710
Tower of Babel, 45 minutes, 207
Money!, 30 minutes, 2nd (of 3), 427
Magna Grecia, 90 minutes, 2nd (of 4), 286

For those of you counting at home, that's 36 hours of gaming in a 68 hour span. Still haven't caught up on my sleep - hopefully I can do that tonight.

Nor Egrets

2006-05-08T22:00:00.000-07:00

Among the small handful of mottos that make up my creed is "Don't regret the things you do, only the things you don't do". While I have remained faithful to that adage throughout all aspects of my life, my gaming hobby is the one area where I have giving myself free reign without boundaries. Given that, I put an asterisk on my answer to May's Question of the Month - "What gaming-related decision have you made over the last year or two which you wish you had made differently?" - as no trigger has gone unpulled in recent years, so I can only list items of which I am truly comfortable with the outcome. The runners-up:

I have been very conservative with my purchases in the past two years, so there are few candidates in this front. I wish I hadn't given FFG my money for the first edition of Runebound; I should have waited longer to see how the promised expansion line would pan out. I knew all along that Pirates of the Spanish Main would not be the game for me, but my fondness for the pirate theming compelled me to buy two boxes of the first release. Finally, I wish I had first played the Franks before buying my own copy of Crusader Rex.
I do not recall when I first knew that Rainy Day Games was going to coordinate a used game auction, but perhaps I was desperate for the closet space when I gave my big box of many Eagle Games products to charity.
When I decided to reengage on BoardGameGeek, I did not account for the growth of the community, nor did I get a feel for what was now considered the range of acceptable discourse. I wish I had been more tentative; in any case, I am for now back to doing little more other than asking and answering rules questions straight-up.

My primary answer for this question is my decision to attend Oasis of Fun 2005. Making a trip like that is a big money investment, and it meant additional time away from my family on top of all the local gaming gigs I attend, so I need to get a lot of return out of it to make it worthwhile. One of the primary benefits of going in previous years was to find out which new games would be worth introducing to my local gaming group. However, since that time, other folks in the group have been buying new games at a rapid rate, and, due to my own personal tastes diverging from the group's tastes, my recommendations and anti-recommendations get ignored (example - the play Tower of Babel this past weekend at the group's retreat). With this aspect of the investment all but vanished, it ends up being more of a pure getaway vacation.

I do not want to burn any bridges here, so I will say up front that OoF '05 was really well organized, I had much fun most of the time - the Ron Howard incident will be a fond lifetime memory - and the organizers and attendees are very pleasant. When OoF was first created, it was largely intended to be an invitational event "for the rest of us" on the nigglybits yahoogroup. However, since that time, several of the OoF crowd have received invitations to the Gathering of Friends (as well as Greg Schloesser's Gulf Games), and, as a result, new additions to the OoF roster seemed to primarily come from the GoF/GG crowd. Again, all of these folks are very nice people, they do a good job at creating an atmosphere of inclusion, and I have no issues with the criteria used for this social selection. However, it dampens the experience somewhat. First, these persons do not have - or at least do not exude - the same level of excitement for being at this type of event as that of others who get fewer and more modest opportunities, particularly when it comes to the playing of releases that received first exposure at GoF (although they frequently display enthusiasm for exposing and teaching new games to others). Second, throughout the entire con, it is hard for someone on the outside to overlook the shimmering presence of an inner circle. While this is largely a non-factor in my online communications, things change considerably when you have to deal with face-to-face social interaction, and it seems masochistic to subject oneself to such an environment within the premise of a "vacation". Some may think I am being overly sensitive or paranoid or insecure or whatever, but I suspect it is a common, natural sensation (perhaps even a social truism); I am just sharing my feelings as I understand them to be.

In any case, I will not be able to attend OoF '06 due to childcare issues. While I am still considering attending again the more bourgeois BGG.CON this November - I grabbed a reservation, but am waiting for more event info before arranging travel and boarding - starting next year I will likely use my summertime travel allowance for GenCon.

Lessons Learned Ever?

2006-05-06T09:49:00.000-07:00

"What gaming-related decision have you made over the last year or two which you wish you had made differently? Why?"

Like some of our other columnists, it seems wise to just start with a list of the bigger game-related decisions I’ve made in the past year or two. I’ve got an idea already of the one I regret the most, but here are some sketch notes. There are plenty of little ones, like not being able to get in either game of Die Macher our group has done this year (sniff), but those are for another day.

Top Ten Bigger Decisions
1. Start SunRiver Games
Like Chris, no regrets at all. We may not print as many games as we
want to, but that’s part of making use of the time and resources we have.
2. Publish Havoc as our first game.
No regrets. Havoc was an affordable first step into publishing. The
Havoc expansion is now out on Boardgamegeek as well now!
3. Hand assemble Havoc
This took ‘way more time and effort than we thought – probably wouldn’t
do this again except for much smaller print runs. And it’s dangerous!
4. Make Havoc “exclusive”
Debatable, but at the time it happened, no distributors or other outlets would
even talk to us about carrying our first game.
5. Import hundreds of games from Germany
Aha, this is my crown jewel lump of coal. More below.
6. Go to Dragonflight
It was fun to be an invited guest, and even though the location was funky
the people were great and I got lots of playtests done.
7. Go to Essen
No regrets at all. Fabulous company, got to meet my German friends
face to face, got to meet famous game folks, Havoc did well. All good.
8. Go to Boardgamegeek.con
Was not successful from a company standpoint, but Rita got to go, we got
to meet the Ginn family, Nick Danger (!) and some other great folks.
9. Not go to Sunriver (several)
Many regrets, but in almost every case something had come up at home or
at work that prevented me going. But missing my favorite retreat is tough.
10. Not go to PowWow
Some regrets, since this is a conference for game designers to play prototypes
and get feedback. Expensive to get to from here, but I’ll hope to go someday.

Why Did I Think Importing Would Be Fun?
So I won’t go into all the history here since I’ve ranted it out before. The short version is I brought about 200 games home from a friend’s house in Germany when I went to Essen. This is the big decision I regret the most I figure, in terms of “not being worth the hassle.” Where I though I’d be able to get rid of enough of these games to pay for the others and the shipping from Europe, it turns out not to be.

First, the work required to sell them on Ebay is not bad if I’m selling 5 games or less, but selling hundreds? Yuk. Selling on Boardgamegeek is easier, but still requires careful checking of the games beforehand; I hate giving or receiving games that are incomplete and I didn’t know that up front. And some of the games in this 200 lot are incomplete, although they were sold as complete. Grrr.

Second, pricing is also problematic. Games I bought that weren’t reprinted at the time (like Kohle, Kie$ & Knete / I’m the Boss) are now worth less than I paid for them. Heavy games like Carabande cost so much in shipping that their sale value is potentially less than I paid with shipping figured in. So I’ve got a bunch of games that I should donate to conferences, give to friends, etc since they’re not going to sell for what they cost.

A few good things did come from this – I got some games I’ve been dying for, like the original Roads and Boats, Tal der Konige, Schmidt Spiel Acquire, some other grail games. But overall, I wouldn’t do it again.

A Related Lesson
So recently I did a much smaller purchase on German Ebay, partly to see if it worked any better. I asked my German friend Norbert to just pack the games in one big box and send them over (they were sent to his house first). I got: Carabande (original), El Grande (German version), Acquire (Schmidt Spiele), Kula Kula (original Edition Perlhuhn), Waldmeister (Andreas Seyfarth), Foil (3M Butterbox), Venture (3M Butterbox) and Bongo (sealed, Bruno Faidutti). This worked a tiny bit better overall, and the big box was 62 Euros to ship, or about $10 per game, ($20 for Carabande).

While in auctions it’s sometimes good to buy more than one thing from the same seller, that’s not true for importing. I got Kula Kula, Waldmeister and Bongo for good prices, but didn’t really “want them.” So after paying shipping, they’re not bargains any more.

It looks to me like what works are the large group-orders, say from Adam-Spielt, or other group orders where I just get what I want and pay a share of shipping. Buying single games from Germany – too expensive. And importing games I don’t really want? Dumb. Oh, these harsh lessons …

Regret is for Humans

2006-05-04T22:32:00.000-07:00

"What gaming-related decision have you made over the last year or two which you wish you had made differently? Why?"

Wow – good to be back. Can’t believe it has been over a month since my last post here. Hopefully I can get back in the swing of things with this post.

This question is the most difficult I’ve faced so far, and even as I type I’m struggling to answer it. So I’ll just ramble for a while about the significant decisions I’ve made and see if I stumble upon anything. While regret isn’t specifically mentioned in the question, I’m going to use that as a theme as I walk through choices I’ve made in the past 1–2 years.

Certainly the most significant gaming-related decision I’ve made is to help start Sunriver Games and get into the game publishing business. This wasn’t entered into lightly, and it has been more work than we ever imagined it would, but clearly no regrets there. It would be great if we had the time and resources to publish more games more frequently, but for now we’ll continue doing the 1–2 games a year routine and make sure we have fun doing it. We did just ship an expansion for Havoc thanks to some good early planning by KC. Maybe I regret deciding to hand-assemble the game, but in the end it was a bonding experience for all those involved and is a sort of badge of honor we can all wear.

I’ve missed the last 2 or 3 Sunriver events, and I’m missing the one happening this coming weekend. I can’t say I regret the decision to not attend because in all cases there hasn’t been a choice to make. This weekend, for example, Julie is in Kansas City with her twin brothers celebrating their birthdays and Cinco de Mayo. I don’t think Doug is ready to have Jacob and Matthew at the retreat… maybe when they are 16 and 18. Instead I’ll host some gaming at our house and maybe I’ll even get the motivation to write it up over on that other place that I’ve been neglecting lately.

I committed to playing through my unplayed games this year, including new games I purchase. No regrets there – it has been a blast so far and I think I have a decent chance of getting through it. Especially if I can get in a game of History of the World, Conquest of the Empire, or Diplomacy this weekend. I knocked down a bunch while Jim and family were in town, but have slowed down since. I’ll give a detailed update in a week or so.

Let’s see… conventions. Went to Essen, went to GenCon, went to BGG.CON last year. No regrets there. Would have been fun to go to the Gathering this year and I probably could have managed an invitation, but I’m doubtful to attend that until the kids are a bit older and I feel less guilty ditching them in spring (and in the middle of baseball season). Even then… I’m not sure that would be my gig. I’d almost rather just hold something more intimate out here in the NW. I won’t be going to GenCon or BGG.CON this year, but I’ll make up for it with another trip to Essen.

Game purchases – sure, there are some games I regret purchasing but I have a hard time getting too worried about those. The games still find a good home eventually and I rarely dislike a game so much that I regret with any sort of vengeance.

As some of you know I enjoy role-playing games quite a bit, but my gaming over the past 2 years has been limited almost exclusively to the standard D20 staples like Dungeons and Dragons and Star Wars RPG. Fun stuff, easy to learn, and appropriate for the kids. The problem is that I’ve missed out on some of the indie RPGs that have been widely received with acclaim – games like Dogs in the Vineyard, Polaris, Thirty, and probably a bunch more I haven’t heard of. These are not necessarily kid-friendly RPGs, but that’s a regret as well – it would be very interesting to have an infrequent gathering of adults that would like to play some one-off RPGs like those I’ve mentioned. So, conscious or not, the decision to not play any of these games is one I regret and hope to rectify. If any of you RPG/boardgame crossovers have any suggestions on a good D20 alternative to consider for a light-weight RPG group, lemme know.

Decision Angst

2006-05-04T13:08:00.000-07:00

I had planned to write a report on the that OTHER gathering (I am, of course, referring to the Gathering of Friends here) but I’ve decided to wait until next week, when I can compare (and contrast – I must be channeling one of my college profs) the Gathering of Engineers in Sun River to that Ohio gathering. I expect them to be completely different, but one thing I’m confident they’ll share is that they both will be more about the people than about the games! So – look forward to that next week!

This week, I’m going to try and address Eric’s “Question of the month”:

"What gaming-related decision have you made over the last year or two which you wish you had made differently? Why?"

A tough question, to be sure – not that I don’t have a good candidate for it (I do), but because in general I’m happy with most of my gaming-related decisions.

Most recently, I was able to attend the Gathering of Friends again this year – the added twist being that I took my wife along for the first time (not without some trepidation). It’s not that I was worried about the people, I was more concerned that she’d find that much gaming, all at once, not to her taste – luckily, that turned out not to be a problem, and we both signed up to attend next year, so I guess she liked it enough to return!

Another (less recent) decision was joining the RipCityGamers upon my move to Portland – although it wasn’t much of a “decision”, since at the time I didn’t know of any alternatives, and since it’s turned out well I’ve had no occasion to investigate if any exist! If it were a game, this would have had very low “turn angst”!

A minor decision that I somewhat regret is that I HAVEN’T done the game purge thing that others in the local group have – I certainly own games that I’m unlikely to play, but for whatever reason (sentimental, hoarding, take your pick), I’ve been unable to pull the trigger and even make a list (or, more likely, a pile) of candidates. This is pretty minor, though, and hopefully I’ll eventually overcome the resistance – if Dug can, I ought to be able to!

So that leaves the decision I felt the most disappointment about - not attending the inaugural BGG.con. The main reasons were due to being swamped at work (transitioning into a new position with the same company), and having allocated all of my (sadly all too limited) vacation time. I would’ve enjoyed it immensely, I’m sure, as I used to game with the organizers back in Dallas – and while I include Aldie and Derk here, I’m also referring to most of those who worked the con as well. Also, several folks from the local group made the trek – so it would have been a nice chance to game with friends both old and new.

Sadly, I don’t think this year will result in a trip to BGG.con either – although that could change, depending on what we decide to do with our vacation time (visiting friends in Europe – and possibly a jaunt to Essen in the bargain – are currently being pondered).

So, there you have it – my biggest regret, and a promise to discuss the Gatherings next week!

Grets and Regrets

2006-05-02T12:23:00.000-07:00

"What gaming-related decision have you made over the last year or two which you wish you had made differently? Why?"

You'd think I'd be able to answer my own question, but this is actually a hard one. It's not easy to think of gaming-related "decisions." Career or family related decisions, sure, but gaming? What exactly do you "decide" about gaming? Other than "yes, more please."

The timespan roughly covers the time since I moved to the Portland area, so that makes it easier to break things down. Over this span, I've:

Left one gaming group in Tacoma
Joined this group (Rip City Gamers) in Portland
Attempted to attend the Rainy Day Games boardgaming nights and never did see anyone.
Co-started a gaming group at work with Chris
Not joined two miniatures groups based in Portland
Started a semi-regular wargaming night with Keith
Joined this blog
Bought a lot of games
Sold a few games
Traded a handful of games away

In between all that, Jodie and I have managed to play games 2-3 nights a week, on average.

Along the way, there's been lots of choices to make about a lot of things. Most small, but a few larger ones have presented themselves, too. And as we all know, not doing something is a choice, right?

I'm having a hard time coming up with a decision to do something that I've made and regretted. Joining RCG has been a great thing – I've met a lot of good people and played lots of games I would likely never have been exposed to. The gaming group at work has been great fun, and Keith is a great host for wargaming. I just wish I still had a setup like his...

I did get into a couple online tiffs with a wargame-designer-who-shall-not-be-named and I no longer buy his games (and I've sold many of the ones he designed that I owned.) I don't regret that decision, either.

As I'm really not seeing any likely candidates for things I've done that I regret, there must be something I've decided NOT to do that I regret.

One big candidate is deciding to not join either of the miniatures groups in Portland. (Western Oregon Wargamers or Ordo Fanaticus) I miss playing miniatures games. I get to paint occasionally, but pretty much the only times I've been able to push lead since moving down here has been with my old group up north.

There's a lot of structural problems with joining those groups, though – they both meet in the same facility in Central Portland. That's not easy for me to get to on a weeknight. Also, time is precious – I'm already committing one night/week to boardgaming and I doubt committing to a second one to miniatures would be considered a good thing by my wife. Thirdly, there isn't a whole lot those two groups play that I'm interested in. I haven't seen a single game announced by WOW that caught my fancy, and pretty much only Flames of War and Blood Bowl are games OF players play that I like. That limits the appeal a tad. Of course, I could always evangelize my games within the group, but that's usually a lot of effort for very little return.

So, while I regret not playing much for miniatures since I've been down here, I can't say I would change the decision to not join those two groups.

That really only leaves one thing that's sort of been nagging at me for a while, and after some serious thought, it deserves its spot as the primary decision I've made that I regret.

Once you become sufficiently advanced or literate in a hobby/sport/pastime of any sort you end up with a number of decisions. Some are implicit, some are explicit: "Stay at this level, or advance?" "Travel?" "Move up a league?" In miniatures, I've definitely moved up a couple steps – I frequently travel for tournaments, and am listed in the national rankings for DBM. Back when I was a frequent bowler, I got my average up to the mid-190s, joined a scratch league and even joined an amateur tour in the Seattle area. That's where I stopped, though – I either had to devote a LOT of time to it, or scale back. I even played in the 1985 US Chess Junior Open in Berkeley. (Never got out of E class, though.)

For boardgaming, though, I haven't. The furthest I've ever traveled was driving from Seattle to Portland for Adventure Game Fest (Gamestorm's predecessor). I've had a couple opportunities to go to the Oasis of Fun down in Atlanta, and haven't pulled the trigger. I've certainly wanted to, though. It falls into the category of how there's 25 reasons to not do something.

You know you're noticed ("someone") in the gaming world when you get an invite to the Gathering of Friends. (or you're a friend of someone who's someone.) Let's call that "moving up a level." There have been a few things I've had a chance to do that likely would have gotten me an invite, but I've always stepped back and let the opportunity pass. In fact, I nearly let the opportunity to join this blog pass, as well – and some Tuesday mornings, I really wish I had. I've at least co-started two different gaming groups, but that's different than stepping out here and posting – that was definitely a major step for me.

This is something I regret. There are zillions of real reasons why those things weren't done or the trip not made, but every single time I've backed down. Whether those opportunities will come again remains to be seen, but I plan on jumping on at least one. It probably won't be WBC or BGG.CON, but it could be the Oasis next year.

This weekend, we're off to our Sunriver retreat as Doug's posted about a couple times already. This will be my first boardgaming weekend like this, so I'm really looking forward to it. Maybe I'll get to one of the bigger ones next year. We'll see how that goes. Either way, you'll be getting my report next week.

Now That Was A Bad Idea

2006-05-02T10:40:00.000-07:00

Kudos to Eric for coming up with a truly stellar question of the month. What gaming-related decision did I make in the last year or two that I wish I'd done differently?

This is a toughie, as most of my gaming-related decisions have been good ones:

o Selling off a bunch of games through a local FLGS auction,

o Changing the night RCG meets from Thursday to Tuesday,

o Stopped going to WBC, electing instead to spend the same amount of time wargaming with friends at Sunriver,

o Got into blogging (yes, that's a plus),

o Smacked down the Dice Tower, even if a bit harsher than I intended,

o Started gaming more often (4-5 times a month instead of 2-3), and

o Stopped playing wargames online (and stopped waking up at 3am thinking about what I should have done).

The list goes on and on.

In fact, I can think of only two truly painful decisions made recently, outside of a poor decision within a game, which would take several days to list all of them. The two things were:

o Chose to cancel the fall '05 Sunriver retreat when it was down to myself and two others, one of which I'd met once (and haven't seen since), and

o Bought Rocketville at retail.

Since I still think that cancelling the Sunriver retreat was a legitimate choice, I'd say that the winner goes to buying Rocketville at retail. Although even that has a silver lining in that I can whine about it for at least a few months.

When I was younger, so much younger than today, my mother told me that everything happens for a reason. While I have to admit that I don't buy the idea of a Higher Power manipulating things in my life at that level (it would correspond to us taking an active role in the life of an anthill every minute of every day), it does give me some motivation to look for positive results in any negative events in my life. The only place I have trouble doing this is when the negative event is health-related, I simply can't get past feeling crappy (or terrified, as in when my singing voice crashed for six months a few years ago and no one knew what caused it or if it would get better - and no, prayer didn't help).

As such, the only truly negative thing that could happen that would be game-related would be to lose one of the long-standing members of Rip City Gamers, especially to death. So stay healthy, guys.

Question of the Month: May

2006-05-02T09:11:00.000-07:00

Being the first full week of May, each blog entry this week will answer the following question, provided by Eric, who gets first crack at it: "What gaming-related decision have you made over the last year or two which you wish you had made differently? Why?"

Those of you playing from home can use this entry to post your own answers!

Tools of the Trade 2: Light Tiles

2006-04-29T10:26:00.000-07:00

This is the second in a series of unknown length about making game prototypes. Today's session: making light tiles of any size that look nice and hold up reasonably well for playtesting. Next session I’ll cover making cards for card games and board games.

THE TACKY WORLD OF PEEL-N-STICK
If you don’t need heavy tiles, but you want something that will lie flat and usually stay put on a board or on a table, this may be one way to go. I’ve used this to create light tile sets for Isla Nova (100 hexagonal tiles about 2 inches across) and for Metro 2 (60 tiles about 1.5 inches square). Here's a picture of this type of tile being used in the original Northwest Trek, which features a unique five-sided flat tile about 2.5 inches wide.

Fronts. The key to this type of tile is to buy and print the tile fronts on “full-page label stock.” I just Google’d that phrase and found plenty of stores, online and off, that offer labels of this type. The Avery standard numbers are 5165, 5265 and 8165 so anything compatible with them should work pretty well.

Print the tile images (color or whatever) on regular 8.5 x 11 full page labels. One example would be at Einktech, where 50 sheets of this 8.5 x 11 size label sell for $11.95 (on sale). Shopping Headquarters (whatever that is) has an even better deal with 100 full page sheets at $15.30 postage included.

Test the paper once it’s printed to see if the image will hold up under use – rub it with your thumb or something. If the print is frail at all, you can laminate your tile after it’s stuck to the backing. See the notes below.

Backs. My favorite for this type of tile is Report Covers, often pulled out of the recycle pile at business locations. These might be consultant proposals that get tossed, old computer printout covers, anything that is sturdy, cuts with scissors and is clean monocolor or patterned on one side. It usually doesn’t matter if one side has been used, since you can cover that up with your label stock. Flat cover stock is best, but you can use the flat portions of patterned or embossed covers as well.

We’ve also used clear acetate, leather look reports and vinyl for backing material. But some materials don’t stay flat once cut into tiles, so test ahead of time. Matte board (used to frame pictures), foam-core board and thin woods are also nice, but those materials all need to be cut with a razor knife or rotary knife and straight edge. I’d like to acknowledge “anonymous” who wrote in last week about his/her success in using matte board, spray glue and a rotary knife. Sounds good!

Preparation. Print the fronts first. Peel off the label backing carefully and expose an edge (like ½ inch) of the label. Place the backing material (so that you will cover the side you don't want) on the exposed sticky edge and arrange it so the printed image will have the backing material behind it all the way around. It usually does is you’ve printed an 8 x 10.5 inch image on an 8.5 x 11 inch page.

I usually do the next step upside down, that is, I'm looking at the printed label. Carefully peel the label backing in a straight line away from your exposed edge, smoothing the sticky label image onto backing as you go. You don’t want air bubbles under the image. If the label peel-off is split diagonally, make sure you catch all of it as you peel and press – there’s no UNDO button here!

Cutting. For decent prototypes, I just use a pair of heavy shears (scissors) and cut the tiles out one at a time, starting with longer straight lines for efficiency. It helps in your original tile image to have a little space between tiles, like maybe a neutral colored border. That way you can cut out each tile with a little wiggle room.

One level up in quality is to use a razor knife or rotary blade to cut the tile edges. If you’re careful, this method allows you to print your tiles closer together so you can get multiple tiles’ edges cut on a single pass.

Notes. Last, laminate if you’re going to. This will make a tile that lasts a long time, but it’s more work. Since you’ll be cutting these tiles out, make sure the laminate sticks to the image after the card stock is cut. There are peel-and-stick laminates for this as well.

And if you can get peel-and-stick laminate thick enough, you can make tiles directly by printing on card stock, thick laminating it and cutting the tiles out. However, I haven't seen thick laminate like this except in commercial operations.

Next time – the wonderful world of printing CARDS. I’ll try to cover card stock, peel-and-stick and using card sleeves. Hoo boy.

Howdy!

2006-04-27T13:22:00.000-07:00

First of all, a big “Howdy” to everyone – I’m excited to be joining the Gathering of Engineers crew! As is, apparently, semi-traditional, my first post will be something of an introduction – with a focus on my gaming history.

I grew up in Milwaukee, WI, in a family that did a lot of gaming – everything from cribbage, Yahtzee, Mille Bournes, and the like, including some chess, although I never played competitively. In high school, I played a lot cards – mostly Sheepshead (aka Schafkopf auf Deutsch), a trick taking game that I’ve never seen played outside of Milwaukee (although apparently it’s also still played in Germany). We played before school, during free periods, during lunch, and occasionally on weekends – keeping track of “points” while at school (since playing for money was, erm, frowned upon). I also got into more serious board games a bit in HS, including Diplomacy, and also RPGs, especially D&D and Traveller.

After high school, I went off to college at Milwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE), and while a lot of people remember college as the pinnacle of their gaming lives, for me there wasn’t much in the way of gaming during college. What with working quite a few hours at the local newspaper, to DJing at the college radio station, to actually studying now and again, I found I didn’t really have the time!

After graduating college in 1990, I got back into gaming – one of the guys I met through my first job introduced me to games like Cosmic Encounter, Shanghai Trader, Rubout and the like (hi Gerry).

In early 1993, I moved to Dallas, Texas to take a job there, and found the local gaming store through asking on Usenet (probably rec.games.board, although it could have been one of the RPG groups as well). This being 1993, I got sucked into Magic: the Gathering pretty heavily – I think the first cards I bought were black-border, and I definitely was playing prior to the release of Arabian Nights, as I bought a lot of that set at it's release. While I enjoyed MtG, it eventually paled for me – the main knock on it was that the deck-building portion was pretty much a solo activity, and with MtG deck-building was a big part of the game. I played MtG mostly in the back of the Game Chest, the local shop, and as a result met a lot of other game players, and was able to expand my gaming horizons to include board games – I remember play testing a set of expansion powers for Cosmic Encounter for Mayfair just before they lost the Cosmic Encounter license.

In 1994 or so, I discovered “German” games, primarily through a combination of UseNet (rec.games.board), Ken Tidwell’s Game Cabinet, and Mike Siggin’s Sumo magazine. My first purchase of a German game was Modern Art (the German version), which the owner of the Game Chest in Dallas had brought back from a trip to Germany. I was immediately hooked – not sure I can point to exactly why, although the shorter time commitment needed for a German game vs. a typical American game of that era probably had a lot to do with it! I bought quite a lot of German games – many that were imported (my first copy of El Grande was a German edition, pre-SdJ, for instance) from various sources, mostly mail-order and/or online.

In 1998 or so, Derk Solko posted to rec.games.board about trying to get gamers together in the Dallas area, and after meeting Derk I was invited to join the Dallas Metrogamers. This group met primarily on weekends, usually Saturday, and mostly at people’s houses rather than in public spaces. This invite is what eventually led to my being invited to the Gathering of Friends, as one of the guys (howdy, George!) in the Saturday group had been going for quite a few years, and was able to arrange an invitation – I think 2000 was my first Gathering, and I’ve been back every year since. I’ll have more to say about that other Gathering in my next post!

Eventually, Saturday only proved too infrequent, so some of us started gaming on Tuesday evenings as well, playing in the café at a local Border’s bookstore. We named our Tuesday night group the Card Benders, as we were there to have fun and enjoy gaming without having to worry about people being tense/uptight about using the components of the games. In 2003, Chris Brooks was in Dallas for a conference, and had contacted one of the other Card Benders about joining us for a night – this would later become important when I found a job in Oregon, and relocated to the Portland area in August, 2004.

In 2004 (in March) I was married to my lovely wife Carrie – who, luckily (for both of us, probably) is also a gamer, though not quite as obsessed as I.

Through Chris, I was introduced to the Rip City Gamers, and have been gaming (less regularly than in Dallas, but as regularly as I can) with them here ever since. It’s been a lot of fun, and I’m looking forward to sharing my thoughts on games in this forum – as well as attending my first “Gathering of Engineers” (an only semi-joking name for the gaming retreats the Rip City Gamers take) in just over a week, and I’m really looking forward to it!

So, happy gaming, and I’ll see y’all next week!

State of the Blog Address

2006-04-24T23:19:00.000-07:00

First the good news: Tim Isakson will start writing weekly in the Thursday slot, which has been vacant for some time. With the addition of Tim comes the first direct link between GoE and GoF, which will take the edge off the flippancy somewhat. I, for one, hope that he takes us back and beyond.

The bad news is that I am not sure how much I will be able to contribute to GoE for the rest of this year. Those who know me really well know that I am not one to make promises that I am not able to keep - this manifests itself at work through my shifty unwillingness to commit to unrealistic requests - and I am just being realistic with everything going on. I would like to get back to my previous regularity, but between my two-year-old and an out-of-control project at work, I have little time or energy for things such as writing which take plenty of both. There is just way too much chaos in my other spheres to be able to concentrate on this one. Allergy season started this week and that will make the next two months all the more challenging.

Writing is very hard for me, and I hold myself to such a high standard in everything I do (well, at least those things I care about; my wife would have a lot to say about my housekeeping abilities) that I am rarely satisfied with the final outcome. I do not like producing things which I cannot bring to a certain level of quality, a characteristic which dooms any ambitions I may have to be a game designer. Whereas it seems most of us here have a hard time with scratching up material, I easily have another year of topics in my head-queue, and have a strong desire to publish these thoughts. I actually have two near-finished articles for last week and this, but I am facing the dark side of the 80/20 principle. Even polishing off a submission for the Game Group series is incredibly daunting at this point.

I hope that the other guys will keep the momentum going, and hopefully the addition of Tim will help. I feel really bad about this; I feel as if I have let the gang down, I miss posting my articles, and I fear that if I (being the one to kickoff the project and still king of logistics) were to back down any, the whole thing would collapse due to others having easy outs. I feel very positive about our collective work even though I have been disappointed with my recent lack of contributions. After a few months, my daughter should be phasing out of the terrible twos, and my work project will be over the hump (if not axed). Until then, maybe this will turn out to be a temporary sag and I will get lucky, a second wind bringing me back to posting regularly. At a minimum, I will commit to participating in the Question of the Month articles. Anything beyond that, I cannot promise...

Tools of the Trade 1: Heavy Tiles

2006-04-22T10:51:00.000-07:00

This is the first in a series of unknown length about making game prototypes.

Today's session: making heavy tiles of any size that look nice and hold up reasonably well for playtesting. If I can figure out how to add or link to pictures of this stuff, I'll link those later.

Disclaimer - these techniques would also apply if you are making a "test copy" of a published game, but I leave that long discussion about the legalities and the ethics of that to some other discussion. I have used this, for example, to make a partial copy of the first Carcassonne, specifically so I could add other tiles that I designed to the game as a home-made "expansion" and not have those tiles stand out from the regular tiles in the game.

FLOOR TILES
This is my favorite for a set of hand-made tiles that feel great, look nice and can be done fairly inexpensively. I’ve used this for Isla Nova (100 hexagonal tiles about 2 inches across), for Metro 2 (60 tiles about 1.5 inches square) and for smaller pieces like those in Pizzza (the topping counters are diamond-shape about 0.5 inches by .375 inches.

Fronts. Print the tile images on regular 8.5 x 11 heavy card stock. If you can find card stock that’s 12 inches square and you can print that size, even better, but I’ve never even seen it advertised. Test the paper once printed to see if the image will hold up under use – rub it with your thumb or something.

If the print is frail at all, consider laminating your tile front before sticking it to the backing. This will make a tile that lasts a long time, but it’s more work. You can even get away with printing on other lighter stock or shiny paper if you’re going to laminate it. However, since you’ll be cutting these tiles out, make sure the laminate sticks to the image after the card stock is cut. There are peel-and-stick laminates for this as well

Backs. We have a chain store here called Dollar Tree. At most of them, you can get three square feet of linoleum flooring (three square tiles) for $1.00. Or you can get slightly more expensive stuff at a Home Depot or similar. This stuff is peel-and-stick – so it’s easy to slap your card stock fronts onto it, cut it out and be done!

For now, pattern doesn’t matter. If it’s too obvious, use a tile bag for drawing tiles out of. I choose tiles that are butcher block, dark wood or marble – stuff that has no discernible pattern once it’s cut into tiles.

Preparation. Print the fronts first. Then laminate if you’re going to. Remember that some laminates don’t stick to the printed image if the edges are cut, so check that out too. You can easily get an 8.5 x 11 sheet on one of your floor tiles, but depending on size of tile, you should be able to use quite a bit more of the floor tile efficiently. And once you’re using smaller areas of the floor tile, cut the front image (cut out some tiles) so it does fit on the tile space available.

Peel off the backing carefully and expose an edge (like ½ inch) of the floor tile. Place the tile front (image showing!) on the tile and arrange it so there is a little border of tile backing all the way around. I usually cut the image right down to its border, so later I’m cutting just floor tile, not image and floor tile. Now carefully peel the tile backing in a straight line away from your exposed edge, smoothing the image onto the sticky backing as you go. You don’t want air bubbles under the image.

Cutting. For decent prototypes, I just use a pair of heavy shears (scissors) and cut the tiles out carefully, long lines first, finishing up one at a time. It helps in your original tile image to have a little space between tiles, like a darker colored dark border. That way you can cut out each tile with a little wiggle room.

One level up in quality is to use a razor knife or similar to cut the tile edges on the fronts. You want to cut through the card stock, but you don’t have to cut through the whole floor tile unless you really like using up razor knife blades. I just cut through the fronts and finish the job with my trusty scissors. This way the scissors edge doesn’t bruise the edge of the image quite as often and looks a little cleaner, and the tile cuts quite easily since it's been "scored."

If you’re careful, you can use a razor knife for the whole job and print your tiles closer together so you can get multiple tiles’ edges cut on a single pass. But for me, it tends to save me pennies and often as not I miscut at least one line which ruins a bunch of tiles. Then I have to do a specific image re-print, just to re-make those few damaged tiles.

Notes. There are other home decor products that can also work as tile backs – like peel-and-stick wall fabric and peel-and-stick cork board. To be useful in this application, it has to be fairly heavy, inexpensive, cut easily and cleanly, not fall apart later (which most cork board will) and look good. But the “3 for a Dollar Floor Tile" will be hard to beat.

Next time – the wonderful world of printing on peel-and-stick full page label stock! This gives us some other lighter choices for tiles, still good looking and durable.

Bet you can hardly wait! =)

You Can Pick Your Friends, And You Can Pick Your... Games

2006-04-19T10:01:00.000-07:00

I hope I'm not generating Group Envy when I discuss RCG's Sunriver Gaming Retreat. Since last fall was the first time we'd had to cancel because of too many member conflicts, I've been chomping at the bit to get out there and play games for four days, especially some of the longer titles that we have trouble getting on the table when people's lives tend to get in the way. The retreat is intended to remedy that situation by taking away the competition, and it works pretty well. Today, I'll discuss the limits I impose on myself (one of the few places I actually exercise some discipline) in choosing what games to take.

Our group has trouble picking what to play at our regular sessions. My collection is hiding in a closet in our basement bathroom (we could have had a third shower, we chose more storage), at least the Euro portion, so it's not terribly convenient for people to trek down the flight and a half of stairs to stand in a glorified powder room looking at what I've got for them to play. Even then, my group tends to be polite about letting others pick to the point of pulling out the riot hose.

That's one of the things I like about our Sunriver retreat, I get to bring pretty much whatever I want to, subject to the physical limitations of owning a '98 Dakota pickup with a canopy and my willingness to get said games into said truck bed. It doesn't guarantee that the games will get played, but I can at least choose them.

Some time ago, after yet another crack about how many games I've brought (currently matched by at least three or four members of the group), I decided to take the opportunity to discipline myself (try it, you'll like it!) and limit the games I could bring to three of those plastic bins with the clamshell locking lids. I like these because they can double as empty bottle and recycle bins during the retreat, all I have to do is line them with a garbage bag, and the lids hang on the sides without taking up much room. They also stack nicely.

Anyway, trying to figure out what to actually put in the bins has become something of a metagame for me, and the entire group takes part in an oblique way. Here's what we do...

The first step is for someone to call the Game Game. OK, we don't call it that, but that's the general effect. This time, I started the ball rolling by posting a list of games I was interested in trying out and asking for more suggestions. I try to focus on games that are longer and thus less likely to see play at home, that are relatively new and unplayed, and/or have tended to become staples (such as Funny Voice Starfarers or Midnight Piratenbucht). Others contribute to the list, and the ones that come up repeatedly are the ones that I try to ensure see table time. This year, there seems to be a lot of interest in Indonesia, Antike, and Antiquity, although that last title may take the entire weekend from what I hear. That isn't the only criteria, but it does tend to point us in the right direction.

Once we have a complete list (a little late in the game this time, as a few of us are at that other Gathering, run by Albert Moo or something), we start parting it out. I don't seem to buy as many of the imports anymore, probably because I don't shop at Funagain Games anymore (another flame-inducing post, I'm sure), and Boards and Bits, which can deliver in a day for a set price regardless of quantity, gets most of my Internet business when I'm not buying from my FLGS. The games in the previous paragraph fit this bill, so someone else will need to bring them, or we'll need to borrow them from someone not going.

Another aspect of this part of the Game Game is who plans to arrive when. Some games will work with a smaller number of people, or specific people want to play a specific game near the borders of the weekend when fewer people are present, so it's important for those people to be sure that the game in question will actually be there. This isn't such a big deal near the end, as we can always ask that a game be left for us, but if they want it to see play earlier, they need to be sure it gets there. Frankly, this hasn't been such a big deal in the past, but it could be, especially with the Big Bringers of Games like Mike not being able to attend this time. I'm hoping Tim and Carrie pick up the slack (hint, hint).

Once we know who is bringing what, now my challenge is to see if all of it will fit in my three bins. I do allow for one or two Very Large Games (and Descent, World of Warcraft, and War of the Rings fit this bill nicely) as they don't even fit in the bins at all. I do have to close the lids, I'm afraid, it's a rule. I'm pleased to say that most of the time I'm able to get all of the games on my list into the bins, but part of the fun for me is not actually seeing if it will work. It's a lot like when I played in a rock band and trying to see how best to fit the PA gear, keyboards, and other accoutrements into the back of my truck, or helping my sister-in-law move. Sometimes, though, games have to be left out, and I make that call pretty close to the wire. Usually I take out games that I want to play rather than others, so it works out pretty well. Some of the games dangerously close to the block this time out include 1835, Britannia, World of Warcraft, Reef Encounters, Princes of the Renaissance, and Arkham Horror. These are games less likely to see table time, so I don't see the point in hauling them out if they just sit on one of our patented Flat Surfaces.

That may sound like entire game, although I could include whether or not they actually get played, but the final part of the game is, you guessed it, getting them back in the bins to go home. This is actually the saddest part of the entire trip for me, as just a few days ago it seemed like we had entire days to play games and suddenly it's over. Nothing like getting up before 8am, setting up a game, then realizing we need to order pizza for dinner. Very disturbing, and if there were a good drug that could make time go slower for me (except for the downtime part, of course), I'd take it.

One of the nice things about knowing which games you intend to take is that you can bone up on the rules before going. I tried to teach Age of Steam the first time our group played it after a 10 minute read through of the rules the night before (it wasn't my game, but only a few of us seem to be willing/able to teach games, and I include myself only in the former category), and it was a bit of a mess. AoS is a tough game to learn anyway, on a par with 18xx titles, and even tougher to play well the first time as you can get yourself into serious trouble very quickly. So, about this time of year I find myself setting up a different game every day (sometimes a couple a day) and running through the mechanisms to be sure I've got it down. That includes checking for errata or new versions of the rules as well, so it can be a time-intensive activity.

Why limit myself? First, it's a pain to take more games. The first time we went, I got probably 50% of my collection in terms of actual titles, and they fit in an old iMac box. Mike made fun of me. Within a couple of years, Mike was bringing more than me, so nyah, nyah. Before I sold 100 games at auction, it would have taken me two hours just to load the truck. This really is an illness, folks. And that's just the euros.

Second, I can focus on bringing games that I really want to see hit the table. When there's less selection, it's easier to choose a game you want to play, and this has been very successful in the past couple of years, despite something like 100 games to choose from once everyone is there.

Finally, it gives me a chance to prove, if to no one but myself, that I actually can impose some discipline on myself when every fibre of my being is screaming that I should take everything I can lay my hands on. Can you say "illness?" Sure you can.

I'll post our final group list the week that we leave, and let you know what fit in the bins.

Blogging, Interrupted

2006-04-18T21:13:00.000-07:00

My wife is addicted to Roma.

Help.

Please make it stop.

I'm trapped. I can't get out.

(Today's blog is inspired by a joke from my wife. Between the holiday, taxes, etc. I just came up blanks this week. We have, however, played Roma 20 times since March 1. It's a very good game. But she really is addicted.)

And They Gathered

2006-04-15T11:42:00.000-07:00

Alan Moon's Gathering finishes up this weekend, and I'm one of those who likes to read the reports and see the pictures.

I'm sorry I'm not there, but I'm glad for my many friends who are. It's kind of surprising to me how many folks from Oregon and even the greater Portland area are there. Off the top of my head, Tim, Carrie, Doug, Mimi, Patrick, Benjamin from here, plus Jeff, Nick and Lorna from further south in Oregon.

It's amazing how many luminaries are there from the German gaming world, major and minor publishers, and so many game designers. And I'd like to pay tribute to the chroniclers who have let me see the games and the people, and hear about what's hot and what's not. First to my email pals Jeff DeBoer and Lorna Wong, who have caught me up during the week on how things are going, whether Havoc is seeing any play (!) and what new games they're excited about.

Next are the wonderful reports of Rick Thornquist. His headlines page gives a quick overview of his daily reports, which always have some great pictures as well. Of special note is his video report - in the first few minutes Tim Isakson, Doug and Mimi Walker are on screen talking about the new Cleopatra game which looks great.

I also enjoyed Valerie Putnam's article called Prose on Cons. I'm a little jealous she lives in the town hosting the event! And I appreciate Matthew Gray's reports on almost each day of the conference.

Games that look cool to me and I want to try: Nacht der Magier (in the dark or not), Thurn und Taxis, Cleopatra and the Architects and Friedemann Freise's new card game. So I'll be hoping some of these make it back to Portland in the arms or luggage of our friends, and get a little taste of the energy of a ten-day game festival.

Mr. Manners, or Running A Retreat

2006-04-12T18:06:00.000-07:00

First off, I'd like to ask for a little help from the readership of this blog. Now that we've drawn you all in with a little controversy (hehehe), it would be nice it you gave us some ideas for topics. Because I do my session reports on another blog (and that mail is then copied to our gaming group), I'm not going to do that here unless there is some other topic of interest that it ties in with, but just about anything else is (and should be) fair game.

So, on to today's topic. Many of you undoubtedly know that Chris is one of the owners of Sunriver Games, a small independent publisher that put out Havoc in time for the 2005 Essen fair. Many of you may not know that one of the inspirations for the name of the company was the Sunriver Resort in Central Oregon where I host a bi-annual gaming retreat for the Rip City Gamers and occasional guests. We've been doing this since 1999 with only a single retreat called because of lack of participation, and I'm gearing up for the next one in the coming weeks.

Hosting has been an interesting experience, with the group slowly evolving along with my hosting style, and the house as well. There have been challenges as well, as we all stay at my family's vacation home. It's pretty easy when there are seven of us, but we're looking at eleven to thirteen this time out, and that can get a little crowded (although I'm a big fan of "the more the merrier"). As such, I'd like to give my thoughts on what makes a gaming retreat of this sort successful, with the hope that some of you can take my experience and create your own memories.

First off, you need to have the right space for the right people. Our house has four bedrooms, able to sleep five adults or four couples (one room has two twin beds that we can convert to a king if necessary). Since we typically have only one or two couples at most, that means perhaps seven people can sleep in actual beds, with the rest on one of the two couches, inflatable mattresses, or the floor, and all in the great room area. In a worst case scenario with eleven people and no couples, that means four people on the floor. One year I slept under the dining room table, and I hadn't even been drinking! When we first began holding the retreat, we even had one less bedroom suite before we built out over the garage, so things were even tighter.

As you can imagine, the retreat is not about sleep, especially for those in the great room. People can get a bit cranky being that close together for a couple of days, so if you have personalities that tend to rub each other the wrong way, give them beds to sleep in to delay the eventual meltdown. I originally slept on the floor most of the time, but have decided that it's my house, dammit, and I get a bed. If we have three couples and one guy brings his son, they will all get bedrooms and I will sleep on the floor for the first time in a few years, which I'm actually delighted by. It means that we've got a lot of people coming!

Another potential sore spot is the kitchen. While our kitchen isn't tiny, it also isn't huge, and the fridge and counterspace are completely overwhelmed with food and drinks in no time at all. Fortunately, I managed to get an extra fridge to put in the garage for drinks, and that should help out quite a bit with this many people. While we have a full set of dishes, glasses, cooking utensils, etc, with that many people the dishwasher is in almost constant use, so we started using plastic "kegger" cups with people's names taped to them and paper plates to try to minimize dirty dishes, and it's been a good choice. We might be filling up the landfill faster, but we save salmon in the process. We also coordinate with common consumables, such as pop, OJ, milk, etc, so that everyone doesn't bring a half gallon of 2% milk that we have to find a place for.

Of course, people still use silverware, mugs, bowls, etc, and we still have some work to do in the area of keeping the sink area clean. There have been retreats when I noticed that female attendees (who for some strange reason find the idea of 72 hours of constant gaming to be A Bit Too Much) are the ones doing the dishes, and if it isn't them it's been me and one or two others who have a lower threshold for mess. This year, with so many people coming, it will be critical to require everyone to clean up as they go, washing any cooking utensils and putting dishes in the dishwasher immediately after eating, as well as cleaning up any counterspace they've used as they go. I've found that people want to be good guests, and a request up front helps quite a bit, along with the occasional reminder. It is hard when a long game is going to do this, especially when you're eating as you play, but it does help to keep everyone sane.

As I live in a state with a strong desire to recycle, we have a few bins for paper and returnables, but these are quickly overwhelmed with that many people. A great solution for the bottles/cans is to set up a large cardboard box in a corner with a trash bag liner and have people throw their empties there. Smaller bins work for paper, metal, glass, and other recycleables. Not everyone is as anal about this as I am, so again a little reminder is a good idea. The point is to a) get everyone involved in contributing their energy so that the host doesn't have to do it all, and b) take care of it as it comes up so nothing backs up in the more used areas of the house. When we leave, I just stuff these things in the car, we dump the returnables at the local store, and off we go.

Clean up is a bit of a pain. Because my entire family uses the house (my brother, my sister, their kids, another sister's kids, business associates, friends, etc - we don't rent the place), I like to leave it pretty much spotless if possible. We do have a cleaning service that comes in and vaccuums, cleans bathrooms, etc, but it still takes some time to get the place closed up. One of the biggest pains is laundry - with five beds and three point five baths, there are a lot of sheets and towels that can be used in just a couple of days. With ten people, it takes about four cycles, and when two are all towels that means about an hour per cycle. Not good if you want to get home that night and home is a four-hour drive away. One solution has been to do the laundry the evening before and have people use a sleeping bag on top of the remade bed. Another has been to have people bring their own towels (brilliant!). At worst, they can throw them in the dryer before packing them for home. A huge time saver!

What I haven't been so good at is figuring out how to divvy up the closing activities so that everyone can help out. I've tried to make checklists, but the simple fact is that I'm very fussy in this regard and just end up doing most of the work myself. One time, I even sent people home and spent the rest of the day closing up without any help, but it took hours and exhausted me. Regardless, many hands make quick work, and I think that this problem simply requires me to calm down, come up with a set of related tasks for a given person to do, then hand them out to the people who stay to the bitter end (we usually go to Monday afternoon, and not everyone stays).

Obviously, not everyone has a space like this to use, but you can just as easily rent a house for a weekend. If you do, I recommend you look for a place that will accommodate your group well. In addition to the sleeping situation, it is critical to be sure you will have enough large flat surfaces (also known as "tables") to play the games on. Our remodel included a breakfast nook, so we have a good sized dining table with butterfly leaves that extend it out so that two regular sized games (not World of Warcraft!) will fit, as well as a smaller table in the nook that also is nice for late night gaming away from the great room. Card tables are fine, but be sure to get one that is sturdy. One year, we set up a game of History of the World on a card table in the corner, and people would take their turns between other games. We almost finished it, and it wasn't a good fit for us, but it's worth trying out.

Another factor is a place to put the games people bring. I'm sure Chris has put up pictures of the massive FLGS-scaled selection that we've had show up from time to time. I used to bring the majority, but now I limit myself to three storage boxes (the plastic kind with locking lids), and we still get something like 60 games. We have several good spaces for this, including a rail that separates the loft from the living/dining area. Boxes are fine, but there is something about this kind of quantity spread out on flat surfaces that is really awe-inspiring. I also recommend that people compare what games they plan to bring, this usually allows me to bring the things I want to see played. In fact, I'm starting that process in the next couple of days, and I'll be very interested to see what people want to play this time out.

One of the big gripes that people have made over the past eight years is that Sunriver is a) a four-hour car ride away from Portland where we all live, and b) requires a trip over the Cascade Mountains. Dave and I had a very exciting year driving through a blizzard with ice freezing on my wiper blades before I remembered that the defroster was a Good Thing. With snow on Mt. Hood, the trip can go from 3 hours with no traffic up to 6 or even more. Needless to say, with a weekend crowd that plans to be in the house for something less than 48 hours, that can be a pain. We've shifted from having our fall gathering from November to October, and pushed the spring gathering from April into May to accomodate the weather. Still, it's a long way to go. Still, one of my favorite parts of the weekend is the drive in (usually with Dave, who has attempted to destroy my eardrums on more than one occasion) and our "recap" on the way home. Carpooling is a great chance to get to know other members of the group beyond our common gaming interest, and it's a great way to build community. Plus, we can only really handle perhaps six cars in the driveway of the house, and that's it for parking within two miles of the house. Buddy up, people!

This has been a very long post, not that that's unusual for me, but I'll try to wrap it up even though there are other elements that help make the retreat fun: the occasional tournament (not such a big hit with our group, but still a possibility), video games in the loft, including the always popular Hot Babe Beach Volleyball (hint: wireless controllers ROCK), an iPod connection to the stereo so we can groan at everyone's musical taste, wireless broadband internet access (very popular, people often bring their laptops) along with a computer/printer if we need to download rules/errata, and of course the grill.

One thing I strongly recommend is to decide on a level of recreational drug use that you are comfortable with. We aren't heavy drinkers, even by tee-totaller standards, and while there is beer and wine flowing most of the day it isn't anything more than a little social lubrication. Fortunately, there have been no problems with alcohol, and I hope there never are. Also, if anyone smokes in the group other than the occasional cigar, I've never seen it - a good thing as we don't allow smoking in the house. No other drugs are in use, and everyone is very comfortable with that.

And therein lies the true key to a successful retreat: Everyone is comfortable. That means that the host lays down the ground rules and the guests are clear about what they require to have a good time. Having clear and frequent communications among the group (typically through our Yahoo Group) ahead of time saves a ton of trouble later, especially for newcomers, of which we will have a few this time out. If you have a problem while you are there, let your host know and work out a quick solution if necessary. We had one member whose 16-year old son got up at the crack of dusk and stayed up until the sun came out - I think someone flashed garlic at him just to be sure we wouldn't end up with any awkward moments while he was "feeding" - and that was a problem for more than one person. I told the member, and he's going to take care of it this time (plus they get the room with the twin beds). It really is that simple.

As I said at the top of the post, please feel free to suggest topics for us to write on in the comments. I'm sure everyone *loves* hearing about how we overcame dishwasher paralysis, so it's in your own best interest. Thanks!

Karnak? If only I was that accurate.

2006-04-11T19:25:00.000-07:00

What changes will come to the gaming hobby over the next 10 years?

Going last on this one is hard. I've skimmed the prior posts but haven't read them closely. Hopefully I don't duplicate too much.

To get a handle on this, let's look back at 1996:

We were in the throes of the CCG boom. Alliances was the big 1996 M:tG release. (Since 1996, Wizards of the Coast has released 28 limited edition expansion sets for Magic. Twenty eight.) Other CCGs released in 1996 were Battletech, Highlander, Netrunner, Star Trek (and Star Trek Next Generation), XXXenophile, and Yu-Gi-Oh! (among others.)

El Grande won the Spiel de Jahres and the DSP. (other SdJ nominees were Ab Die Post!, Campanile, Carabande, Mu, Reibach & Co, Sisimizi, Word Whizz, Speed, Top Race, and WatnDat. Other top-rated games released in 1996 were Hannibal: Rome vs. Carthage, Settlers of Catan Card Game, Age of Renaissance, and Entdecker.

Avalon Hill was still a bit of a force, but only four games came out that year – AoR, Hannibal, Air Baron, and Stonewall's Last Battle. AH had only two years of existence left.

Some interesting miniatures games came out in 1996. Crossfire (a WWII game designed by Arty Conliffe on a dare – there's no measuring), Chipco's Fantasy Rules!, Inferno (a miniatures game based on Dante's book), and Stargrunt II (a great sci-fi skirmish game). GW pretty much owned the Fantasy/Sci-fi market at this point. The only game that really challenged 40K was Legions of Steel, and the aforementioned Fantasy Rules! was the beginning of the “generic fantasy miniatures game that uses anybody's figures” movement.

Since then, a lot has changed.

Arguably, every niche of boardgaming is in its heyday except for hex-n-counter wargames. Gone are the days of 250,000 printed copies of a game like PanzerBlitz. The only strategy games getting sales figures like that these days are SdJ winners. There are more and more quality eurogames being released each year. Yes, some years are weaker than others, but I'd be surprised if the number of published games has ever decreased year-over-year. The number of companies producing high-quality miniatures has exploded in recent years, and what was considered state of the art 10 years ago is borderline archaic now. CCGs have severely declined since 1996, but they had (and still have) a long way to fall.

Where are we going from here? Here's my thoughts. (BTW, I pay zero attention to the RPG market any longer, so I make no predictions there at all.)

1: The rise of electronic board games. Devices such as the Entertaible are the early harbingers. This will take a chunk out of both the board game and video game markets as the social aspects of boardgaming over video gaming become emphasised. A yet-to-be-formed company will have a level of success relative to what Days of Wonder enjoys in boardgaming solely due to games released for a device like this. My personal hope? Cyberboard (or Vassal) gets ported to this kind of device.

2: We've had collectible dice, cards, miniatures, and “constructibles.” What's left? Beyond WizKids figuring out how many different things can be punched out of a credit card sized piece of plastic, what else is there? Look for emphasis on media/entertainment tie-ins in this space. With the video game, music, and movie industries all moving towards the same core issues (too many releases, no originality, and poor quality) cross-marketing will be huge. Topps sells WizKids to Disney.

3: All “wargames” will be produced via a p500-style preorder system. They will no longer be carried by distributors, and as such will not be seen in stores except in direct-order situations. One of the major wargame companies will either fold or be acquired by a different company.

4: Yes, there will still be brick-n-mortar game stores, but they'll be few and far between. No more than 1 per major metropolis.

5: If 3d printers become affordable, somebody will revolutionize the “DTP Wargame” market and merge it with miniatures. You buy a data file, and “print” out the figures.

6: Games Workshop will finally lose its stranglehold on fantasy/sci-fi miniatures. An economic turndown will come on the heels of yet another price rise, and their sales will plummet faster than anyone expects. It will be dramatic, and cause the closure of a number of independent game stores. GW will be bought by a publicly traded entertainment company, and they'll revamp the entire pricing structure. Quality will plummet, and they'll be replaced by Privateer Press as the top fantasy/sci-fi company.

7: The same economic downturn causes the international market for eurogames to shrink dramatically. Many mergers occur, and only three or four major publishers remain. Lots of small publishers try their hand, but distributors balk at most offerings. Look at the comic book market of 10 years ago for an example. However, 7 of the top 10 games on boardgame geek at the end of 2006 are still in print (or at least easily available) in 2016.

8: Battlefront will dominate the historical gaming market. They'll effectively complete their Flames of War WWII offerings, and redo the rules to mixed reviews. The rumored Napoleonic game will be a huge success, and leads to the introduction of either a WWI or Seven Years War line. (Those are about the only remaining conflicts with large appeal that have enough nationalities involved.) Persistant rumors of an Ancients or Medieval ruleset will not come to fruition.

Say the Word "Tomorrow" Without Fear

2006-04-10T11:30:00.000-07:00

'Cause we all live in Future World
A world that’s full of love
Our future life will be glorious
Come with me - Future World!

I am a poor prognosticator. Being averse to change to a fault, I am perhaps too optimistic about things remaining as they are. If it ain't broke, et cetera. And in niche markets, persistence trumps obsolescence; for example, there is no way I would have predicted that Helloween would have released nine more albums - and counting - after the mega-cheesy Keeper of the Seven Keys (see above). Given the mob mentality of American taste, trends can blindside you like a train barreling out of a painted-over cliff face. Seriously, if you had told me a decade ago that puzzle magazines and books dedicated to Number Place (Sudoku) and Cross Sums (Kakro) would be all the rage, I would have bet big odds against it.

Ten years from now, my daughter will be 12, so I hope to be enjoying a lot of gaming time with her. I want nothing more than the environment to be much like it is today. But, as with all else in my life, there will be plenty of surprises, both pleasant and not. Perhaps these ten changes will be among them:

My boldest prediction is that the CCG market will crash. Gaming may still be hot in Europe, but retail stores in the United States that depend on the CCG business to sustain them will be folding. Best side benefit: the FLGS/online debate will be put to rest.
Our niche hobby - particularly German games and war games - will not significantly decrease. The bottom line is that most of us like having an excuse to get out of the house (or, in the case of cons, out of town) and hang with our buds. For gaming addicts, the key breakthrough for online gaming will be the quality and ease of integrating voice communication with our online experience. Combined with key graphics improvement, this will make playing boardgames on the 'net feel much like playing face-to-face.
In an effort to expand their market, Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition will be greatly streamlined, with many of the items currently in the core book moved to "supplemental" material. The campaign will be hugely successful, if only in the blue states.
Gambling laws will be relaxed to allow "professional" poker rooms to run games. The poker craze will grow even more, and at least one prominent nation-wide chain will be established. While the tournament format will be the most popular, there will still be open gaming, although players will have accounts that limit how much they can spend in a given time interval.
BGG.CON will continue to grow, eventually to the size and scope of GenCon. It will spawn off a several-day-long extravaganza which will replace Gathering of Friends as the premier gaming event.
Fantasy Flight Games will get into the collectible miniatures market. Their first effort will be derived from their Twilight Imperium: Armada game.
There will be another Bulge game or two.
The Gathering of Engineers crew will create an eponymous multi-day invitational, filling a gap in the Pacific Northwest. Alan Moon will decline the invitation.
Tom Vasel will make regular appearances on a big-time show in the U.S. - I'm thinking something like Ellen or Today - but he will still consider himself as not being among the elite.
Exactly ten years from now, the #1 game in America will be “Capture the Water Supply”. Shotgun not included.

Ten Years After

2006-04-08T07:26:00.000-07:00

"What changes do you see coming to the hobby over the next 10 years?"

Ten years ago, fewer games named their designers. There was no online play, very little play by email (PBEM), few German games were known here. Magic was huge and Sid Sackson games were ahead of their time. War games and miniatures already seemed like a niche hobby to me.

I won’t offer predictions on what I don’t know very well: so no clues on war games, miniatures, role playing games or live-action role plays. But I’ll happily make some guesses on where I’d like to see things going.

1. There will be more opportunities for online board game play. Not only for smaller publishers to demonstrate their games, but perhaps something akin to blogging – where anyone that does some minimal work to get a game’s pieces and rules up online can host a small game site. This should also mean less traditional play by email where one just types in their instructions to a third party game master.

2. Essen in 2005 had more countries sending game designers than ever before. In the next ten years more designers from more countries will introduce games to the market, partly based on the lower expenses to release games via “print your own” and small subscribed print runs. This means more mechanics, more ideas and more interesting themes in games than the “traditional” Euro designers have ever thought of.

3. There will be more expensive versions of games offered for collectors and snobs to show off, like the all wood Settlers of Catan and the custom built Puerto Rico. At the same time, more cheap games (both in component quality and gaming goodness) will be on American store shelves, continuing to choke out any chance of good designer games making it into mainstream US stores.

4. Higher postage costs will make it harder to trade games with other hobbyists, especially our friends overseas. This will reduce the chance for game collections to grow in depth and width and expose our group to bizarre hard to find titles that turn out to be gems.

And the next few are just my wishes for games I want to play in the next ten years.

5. More games will come with computer power – if they can out a chip in a greeting card, they can sure get into game boxes. For instance, I want a smart pad for Tichu. After a hand, you place your stack of tricks on the pad; it reads your cards and scores your team and the other team as well. It displays current scores when asked. A smart chip for any game that has lots of bookkeeping would be awesome.

6. Next step up. When we need another player for a game, we often have a “cat” play – an extra player for whom all game decisions are made by the group, either as a whole or in rotation. Well, I want a computerized cat (Ccat) that plays various games with me. I tell it which game (using a menu, a plug-in, whatever) and it plays a random yet reasonable strategy. Yes, it requires that the game being played is also “smart” – since the Ccat has to have visual game information such as where are the current tiles and leaders on the board in Tigris & Euphrates. But with a set of games that the Ccat could play, it could actually come in handy when you’re short of players or want a challenge.

7. And this one for game design. There should be some way to write up a set of specs with needed images and have an online service make me a folding board, a set of playing cards, some nice tiles in various shapes, a box, whatever. Sure it might be costly, but what a service. There could be some great games out there that never get tried simply because the designer sees the game in his or her head, but can’t find the resources to get it in physical form.

Wonder if I'll even remember I did an article like this ten years from now ...

Yet Another Crystal Ball

2006-04-06T12:34:00.000-07:00

Here we are, one week after the infamous "Podcast" episode. I'm not going to address that at all (other than the occasional clever remark) unless we set up a listserve or something. It would take me a month to address every issue that the Three Amigos brought up, and something tells me that I'd be defending myself for a very long time. So, no more of that, at least from me. For the record, I am somewhat gobsmacked that this issue got picked up by other blogs, and someone even called me a luminary! Obviously, neither of us get out much. ;-)

Sorry to post a day late, but I've really had to think about this week's question. And I came up with it in the first place!

Part of prediction is to look back in the past and see what changes have occurred over a similar period, then extrapolate accordingly. In 1996 [Note: Dates are approximate for my purposes, so don't feel like you need to comment that such and such a game came out on Dec 33rd of 1995, 'kay?], Euro games were just starting to enter the US gamersphere. GMT ruled the wargame market (or were at least on their way there), even with AH still a going concern. The Internet was taking off, although the web was still just getting started (and online stores were scarce). Card-driven wargames were still in their infancy, with the titles limited to Hannibal and We the People. There was no ACTS, so anything involving hidden elements had to be refereed. I can tell you from experience that refereeing a pbem game is definitely a labor of love, although it does have it's rewards (such as managing to turn over an entire pbem game of History of the World in two months). Pbem was in use, but the graphics were non-existent. There were certainly no play by web games.

I'm going to go with a few assumptions about the next ten years as well. No environmental collapse, commercial activity continues relatively intact despite a dwindling oil supply, the US not under martial law, etc. [Note: This is not an invitation to bitch about my liberal *ss, here, this is just a basic assumption that things will continue more or less as they have for the past ten years without affecting basic infrastructure].

I will also assume that computer and information technology continues to get more portable, more interconnected, and more unobtrusive. We will have instant access to the internet in every populated portion of the US/Canada at the very least.

So, given the above, here are my thoughts about the future of boardgaming:

* Wargaming will become even more of a niche hobby than it currently is. New games will continue to be published, but most will be either DTP or intended to be played on ones Personal Computing/Communication Device (PCCD). Diehards like me who enjoy pushing cardboard around will be able to print up our own copies, but we will be in the minority. paper will have become so expensive that printing out a DTP game will be equivalent to purchasing a published game today. Because the computer will handle most of the bookkeeping, gamers will be able to learn games much faster, and it will possible to finally play all three Barbarossa: Army Group games simultaneously to completion, even if it takes five years. Even with the shorter learning curve, the hobby will continue to slowly die out because of the crumbling educational system in the US.

* The "eurogame" market will crash sometime in the next ten years. I personally believe that we are pretty close to that point now. Using the American film industry as an example (say buhbye to movie theatres as well), there will be such a low qualtiy to quantity ratio that people will simply stop buying/collecting and play what they have. I think this will happen sooner than later. Like wargames, boardgames will evolve into video games with some brains that we play over networks rather than at gatherings (although those will still happen to some extent). They will still be a minor niche in the market, much like role-playing video games are today, mostly because there won't be enough T&A and/or blood. However, I do see some growth in this market, as these games require no background in a historical subject to be entertaining.

* Before the crash (and contributing to it) will be a flood of digitally-distributed games put out by pretty much anyone with even a dumb idea. Sort of like blogs now. This will contribute to the crash in the US, if not everywhere. On the plus side, no one will complain that they are running out of places to hide games from their spouses as all they need is a bigger hard drive.

* As Chinese and South Asian populations become more affluent, more designers and players will emerge in those countries. If you think translating German is difficult, try Sanskrit! True innovation will take place in these cultures, largely because of their different worldviews - The Chinese, for example, will be very good at collaborative games, while the Indians will prefer games that focus on historical/mythological themes.

* Games will increasingly fill niche markets. For example, Christians currently have a few religion-oriented titles available such as Settlers of Canaan, but will have dozens if not hundreds of games to choose from because of distribution via the Internet (and the subsequent reduction in costs, problems with finding publishers, etc). Most of these titles will be derivatives of titles available now, but with niche-specific themes pasted on.

* Games with plastic bits will disappear because of dwindling petroleum supplies. [Note: I'm pretty sure that oil plays a big part in plastics production, but this is something I'm not completely sure of]. Most of the games that today have plastic pieces, even the really crappy ones, will fetch a premium from all the geriatrics who mocked them back in the 'oughts. Like me.

* Traditional card games like Bridge will make a huge comeback, mostly because there will be lots of card decks laying around. However, Poker will have been outlawed as a form of gambling, and all games will take place in clandestine locations. You will be able to watch Bridge tournaments on television (or on the 'net).

* Podcasts, blogs, and the internet in general will be monitored by the federal authorities (OK, this is dystopian, but you know it's coming). There will be a tax on bloggers and podcasters, and they will for all intensive purposes become Big Media outlets. However, there will be a few hardy souls putting out pirate 'casts (known as ArghCasts) in a vain attempt to stick it to the Man. All of these people will be Americans living in Korea. ;-) There will be no content for gamers.

* I won't cover CCGs, RPGs, MMORPGs, or minis, as I need to leave something for the other writers on this blog to cover!

As you can see, the biggest changes will be brought about by changes in the distribution/production channels. I use the changes in music distribution as a model, where the big CD store is eventually replaced by on-line distribution. Some of my predictions are a bit on the light side, but the increasing commercialization of the Internet combined with increasing transportation costs will drive the digitalization of gaming in the future. And to think this isn't the dystopian view!

Next week I will attempt to offend the entire Buddhist world community. ;-)

Question of the Month: April

2006-04-05T00:46:00.000-07:00

Being the first full week of April, each blog entry this week will answer the following question, provided by Dug, who gets first crack at it: "In the last 10 years, boardgaming has seen evolutionary change brought primarily through the ability to get information and even play via the Internet. What changes do you see coming to the hobby over the next 10 years?"

Those of you playing from home can use this entry to post your own answers!

A Sporting Chance

2006-04-04T15:48:00.000-07:00

For many people, the first week of April is the best sports week of the year. There's the NCAA Mens' and Womens' Basketball finals, Major League Baseball opening day, and The Masters. All in the span of a handful of days. There's also the push for the playoffs in the NHL and NBA, and the NFL draft is only a couple weeks away. Formula 1 and NASCAR are in full swing, and I'm sure there's something important going on with Soccer and Tennis. (I quit watching tennis when Bjorn Borg retired, and I'm American, so I don't “get” soccer. Then again, I don't “get” NASCAR, either.)

What on earth does this have to do with boardgaming? Well, if you remember back to when we were introducing ourselves, that's where my roots are. Sports games. A niche market probably more scorned than wargames. (Or at least more thoroughly ignored.)

Periodically over the next few weeks, I'm going to look at a different category of sports games. I've got more experience with baseball and racing games than any others, so those groups will get the most detail.

Baseball Games

First off, let's look at some of the top baseball games with at least 10 ratings. The top games here aren't any surprise at all to someone who's tried more than one or two.

Sher-co Baseball (1971)
Replay Baseball (1973)
Dynasty League Baseball (1994, but a remake of Pursue the Pennant – 1985)
Strat-o-matic Baseball (1962)
Sports Illustrated Baseball (1972)
Statis Pro Baseball (1971)
APBA Pro Baseball (1951)

I've got a copy of Sher-co somewhere in storage. It had a neat gimmick of a grid for each stadium where you didn't get a “home run” result, but instead found out how far you hit the ball. The grid let you know if the ball was in the park or not. Didn't play very quickly from what I recall. As I've mentioned in the past, I was a big APBA fan. Cribbage might be the only game I've played more than APBA Baseball. It doesn't have the most robust statistical model, but it produces good results quickly. I've never played Replay Baseball but there's a large number of fanatics on ConsimWorld, including Richard Berg.

Avalon Hill had three different baseball games. Sports Illustrated (which used “franchise all-star” teams, and was eventually rebranded “Superstar Baseball”), Statis Pro (the more standard game with card sets for each season), and Pennant Race (not listed above – it took a GM's perspective on a baseball season. I think it's an underrated game with potential for redevelopment. I'll have to rescue my copy from storage.)

Strat-o-matic was the third of the “similar system, multiple sports” games after APBA and Statis Pro. It had a rabid following, and most people were either in the APBA or Strat-o-matic camp, but not both. SOM at least gave the illusion of having more statistical accuracy as the pitchers cards influenced events a lot more than in APBA. Whether it did or not is subject to a (lot of) debate.

Interesting that the young turk here is Dynasty League Baseball, and it's 12 years old. Part of this, I'm sure, is due to the computerization of the Baseball Replay market. Diamond Mind Baseball, in particular, is the king here. It was initially released in 1987, and has become the gold standard. In the era of the internet, it's pretty tough to recreate the DMB experience with a boardgame. I believe every game in the list above except for Sher-co and Sports Illustrated Baseball were computerized at some point, with varying levels of success. I know I had the very first APBA Baseball computer versions from Miller Associates. Boy that copy protection blew chunks.

The explosion of statistical research in baseball (and now basketball, football, and hockey) has steadily raised the bar on what these baseball simulation games need to cover to be considered “realistic.” The arms race has definitely displayed itself in the computer game market, but even Dynasty League Baseball shows the results of increased study. The emergence of two organizations, Project Scoresheet (first) and Stats, Inc (later) in the mid-80s made pitch-by-pitch other detailed data available to the public for the first time. This had a direct effect on the games that emerged later. I don't think it's any surprise whatsoever that Diamond Mind didn't come out until Project Scoresheet had been in existence for a couple years.

Oddly enough, I think my fascination with the simulation side of baseball games cost me a job when I still worked at Microsoft. They were working on a baseball game, and were in need of a Project Manager – I interviewed for the position but as my idea of a successful game wasn't really what they were looking for, I didn't get the job. I wasn't thinking “arcade” enough. In the end, I never even played the game.

Game Group: Boardgamers' Pastime

2006-04-03T22:00:00.000-07:00

Boardgamers' Pastime
Submitted by Mario Lanza
Edited by Dave Eggleston

How did the group get started? How does your group find new members?

Turning 30 got me reflecting on life and goals and such. I remembered playing games through my teens: Games Workshop games like Talisman, Block Mania, Chaos Marauders, and a few other games from various publishers. I remembered how much I liked these atypical games to which I was introduced by a friend whose father owned a game. Despite having tried to track down game clubs at various times through my twenties, I had never found the doorway back into the hobby. At 30, I simply decided I was either going to find a club or start one.

I began calling around ― bookstores, game stores, and libraries ― for places that might be willing to offer their facility. The bookstores were a no-go since they couldn't see what was in it for them. All the game stores were willing, but I had high hopes of finding a place that had good lighting, a wide open space, and nice ambiance. I didn't want the typical dingy back room of a game store that is often filled by role-playing, acne-encrusted teens. So when my local library agreed to lend us their Foundation House, an unattached building that met all my requirements, I was overjoyed. I called the club "Boardgamers' Pastime" and promoted it as an opportunity for people 16 and older to come out and test their wits, find good mental exercise.

The wife of the family that donated the Foundation House had just read an article about how boardgames were a healthy pastime for aging seniors; while I didn't expect seniors to be our primary demographic, I certainly was open to having anyone come a join us and learn these games of ours. So with her approval I had a place.

Shortly after, I discovered a group called PA Strategists that met on the other side of the Susquehanna River. It was run by Charlie Hickok, an older gamer who is an excellent player and a true gentleman. I arrived at one of their events and participated in a few games and made the announcement about my new club. Since their club was meeting on the second and fourth Saturday of each month, they suggested alternate weekends. I chose the first and third Sundays and this arrangement has worked out quite well.

With the library as our sponsor, it posted regular announcements in the small local newspapers―a blessing for sure! Additionally, I set up a website as an Internet billboard that I recently converted into a blog. Though we have drawn a mix of gamers and non-gamers over the years the club attendance has plateaued and settled at around 12 to 15.

How would you describe your group?

The best analogy I can come up with is a recreational volleyball league where you get a mix of shapes, ages, and abilities. The club invites people 16 or older; however, most of the members are over 30. The average age is probably 35. Some of the regulars bring the kids, so we do, in fact, have a couple teenagers on occasion. We meet in the Foundation House beside the New Cumberland Public Library on the first, third and (periodically) fifth Sundays from noon till 6 pm. Everyone likes to win, and so that is a goal, but it is not one we take too seriously. The main goal is that we all want to have fun. The secondary goal for many of us is that we like to try new games. We are primarily about the business of games. We share a few off-topic conversations just before we get started playing while we are waiting for stragglers to show up, but mostly we just concentrate on playing and having fun.

How do you decide which games to play?

Charlie and I buy the vast majority of the new games though everyone brings their own tote of favorites. Because my taste differs from Charlie's, he and I do not often play games together. He likes the longer (3-6 hours) and usually more complex games and I like the shorter ones (1-2 hours). More than half of the time, I bring a new game. I set it on the table to showcase it right at the start of our meeting and this usually brings a few players who are more than happy to try it. A few of the regulars have a love affair with certain games and will routinely be suggesting and playing them.

How do you select the start player?

Sometimes we abide by the rules (e.g., "youngest player"), but mostly one player cups his hands from which another draws an unseen bit. The owner of that bit goes first.

What do you consider your group’s signature games?

A few in the group have their own signature games:

● Steve is always trying to stir up interest in Acquire, his personal favorite. His son Jon Shambeda won the Acquire event at the World Boardgaming Championships in 2002. Because he has played thousands of times and can memorize the complete hidden information, he usually cannot get a game going. His fallback is Union Pacific.
● Fred suggests Ra a lot, but his all-time favorite is Medici. He brings it, suggests it, and plays it whenever there are takers; if Jim is around, there are.
● Larry seems to play Settlers at least every other meeting.
● My favorites―La Citta, Tikal, and Tigris & Euphrates―are not well liked enough to often see the light of day.

The standby fillers seem to be Bang! and Citadels. The most popular games among the lot of us are Union Pacific and Settlers. Several in our group will make it past the first round U.P. qualifiers each year at WBC, and a couple have made it to the finals. Railroad Tycoon, which follows Charlie wherever he goes, has recently become popular. Personally, I usually avoid familiar games in favor of fresh ones.

What games were featured in your most memorable gaming sessions?

Mario: I remember once getting a perfect rainbow of colors on the first round in Medici and thinking I had no way of winning. Unbelievably, I was wrong!

Cliff: What is memorable to one person is not to another. What I like the best is coming to the group and seeing two or three games going with at least one person waiting. So a game can start anytime and the variety of games played is good too. Everyone who brings games is always willing to let anyone play any game they bring. That's memorable. Unfortunate is when someone is so concerned with winning that they will sacrifice their good will with the group by leaving, shouting, or arguing a moot point.

Steve: I remember an excellent game of Colorado Rails: tons of competition and fun. Union Pacific is always challenging and memorable as the “kids” try to (and usually do) beat the old timers.

Jim: For me personally, it was the first time I beat Fred - the resident expert and former WBC champion - in Medici. The more memorable gaming sessions are when, win or lose, I learn a game that I just love. It is hard to beat that feeling of discovery coupled with the camaraderie of a good mix of players. Learning Tigris and Euphrates from Mario and Puerto Rico from an enthused group of people are two such memories that come to mind.

What games were featured in your most unfortunate gaming sessions?

Mario: For me, the most dreaded game sessions begin with a poor rules explanation. My biggest pet peeve in gaming is having to sit through confusing game explanations when, I feel, with a little practice anyone could do a decent job. This prompted me to write “The Finer Points of Teaching Rules” for The Games Journal. My second biggest peeve (only because it occurs less frequently) is when rules are so poorly written or ambiguous that it muddles the first experience. I remember spending almost six hours trying to absorb American Megafauna from its rules and then teaching it for almost an hour with much difficulty. Once underway, the game fell flat. Prior to that first play, I was eager to try it from having read several positive reviews. I felt disappointed and it bothered me that I had sunk so many hours of effort into producing a lackluster result.

Also, I have this terrible (although irrational) feeling that dice work against me. I avoid games where outcomes are largely dependent on rolling better than the competition. Though I am not superstitious, nor do I believe in jinxes, people wail in laughter when my prediction for consistently bad dice comes to pass. I have experienced memorable bad luck in Manifest Destiny, Pirate's Cove, and Silverton. Some games allow chancy dice to be reasonably mitigated, so the inclusion of dice mechanics does not necessarily exclude me from a game.

Steve: Playing a 5-hour game that is advertised by members as a 2- or 3-hour game, thus wasting valuable gaming time. Not in a specific game, but if someone has had a bad day, or bad luck, they can sometimes get an attitude and exhibit a moment of poor sportsmanship. It ruins the game for everyone. This is an unusual situation for our group.

Jim: Easy: it was the day we playtested Manifest Destiny for Charlie, which took all afternoon. I like Charlie – he's a challenging opponent and just fun to play with – but I found that game laborious, and to sit through an hour of instruction before even playing was excruciating. I remember just trying to stay awake learning the rules.

What games have created the biggest love/hate division among members of your group?

Mario: Citadels stands out. Along with Fluxx and – appropriately – Plague & Pestilence, I avoid it like the plague. We predominantly play Eurogames; some play card games and others wargames.

Steve: Ticket to Ride (both versions), Union Pacific, Acquire, Attila: there are always people who make sure these games can be played every gaming session. Titan is another love/hate game, as is Risk. The newer versions of Risk (2210 A.D., Lord of the Rings) are better than the original according to many group members.

Jim: Wargames... I would like to play more of them but there is definitely a line there that some of the group will not cross. I generally do not like train games, so I guess everyone has a line drawn somewhere.

What do you do about food and music at your gaming sessions?

Mario: We provide neither food nor music. People bring their own lunches and snacks. Many eat while we are waiting for the rest of the clan to arrive. Sometimes, one of us will make a run to a nearby fast food joint.

Steve: I think this group is very serious about having fun with the mental challenges in games, and some think that music is distractive.

A closing note:

Mario: Because I laud the gaming pastime, I initially had the notion that I could evangelize it and grow the group. After several failed attempts―our National Games Week program brought one man and his little girl who consequently never returned, and the boardgames awareness class I was to teach for the township produced zero signups – I have aimed simply to make our club a light and to allow the moths to come. Helping people discover games is a matter of making the public aware more than it is about campaigning and door-to-door sales. Those who will have an affinity for games will ultimately discover them; in this, I have faith. I am an opportunity broker, that is all. Meanwhile, several times a month I personally have a great time playing games. For what more could I ask?

Luann: To me the group seems to have a larger percentage of females than most gaming groups and a fair number of family combinations. I am also impressed with the variety of ages and personalities. Plus I always have a good time! Last Sunday was hilarious playing Settlers.

Jim: Roll well and live.

Game Group is a monthly series, providing unique profiles of established gaming groups. It was inspired by the “book group” feature in the (most excellent) bookmarks magazine. We want to hear from you about your gaming group! If you would like to participate, send an inquiry to ripcitygamer@comcast.net.

Game Group index:

01/2006: Jerusalem Strategy Gaming Club
02/2006: Long Island Boardgaming Organization
03/2006: Boardgamers' Pastime

The Graphical Design of Antike

2006-04-01T08:56:00.000-08:00

Antike was one of my favorite releases from 2005, and I continue to be impressed with the simplicity and elegance of the game design. I had a chance to play it again last weekend at GameStorm, and though I lost to a last-minute dash by George, it reinforced my belief that this is a solid, fun, replayable game that scales well from 3–6 players. I have yet to try it with 2, but it looks worth trying.

The more I play Antike, the more I am impressed with the graphical design of the game. I figure I could probably learn a few things about design (or at least evaluating design) by breaking down what I think is so special about Antike. So… join me on a photo-rich journey into the myriad of good design decisions made by Mac Gerdts & Steffi Krage.

Bits: Antike has high contrast wooden bits with easily distinguishable colors. There’s no confusing player-specific components in this game, and I suspect even those with mild color blindness would do fine with these colors.

Cards: The nation cards for the game are outstanding, eliminating the need to consult the rulebook to determine what nations are used with different numbers of players. It is also obvious who the start nation is with each nation as well as each nation’s starting cities. This is true for both the English and German maps.

The victory point cards are well designed, though I would have prefered to see English on the back sides of the German language cards. This would have been easy as there’s no need to keep these secret, so no need for a generic card back. Still, the icons make the victory cards easy to distinguish and the numbers help remind players how many of each remains in the game without having to count cards in the stack.

Map board: Antike comes with a two-sided board, adding variability to the game geography while providing language-specific (English and German) help on each respective side. The know-how track has great visuals: it is clear how much each advancement costs for the 1st and subsequent players as well as the benefits accrued for each technology.

The map itself is outstanding, providing bold red and blue lines to separate the regions and making it obvious where troops and ships can pass. Contrast this with a (great) game like Indonesia that uses a highly artistic board but often leaves players guessing about where country border lines start and finish. No such confusion in Antike.

The victory point track on the board is equally solid and self explanatory. No need to look up how many VPs it takes to win in a 3–player game -it is right there on the board, though the statement “ACTUAL NUMBER OF ANTIQUE PERSONS” is interesting. The VP cards that players collect are technically called “Antique Personalities” but are really just victory points.

The rondel is one of the more interesting and innovative game mechanics in Antike, and the design of the board component is on par with the rest of the game. A simple clue like “up to 3 fields for free” helps eliminate any confusion about the cost for moving your marker beyond 3 fields at a time.

Most of the rest of the game’s mechanics are explained in an easy-to-use, dual-language quick reference card. Only criticism here is that they only include 4 of them in the game, but it is easy to share between players when playing with 5 or 6.

Cities on the map produce a specific kind of resource, and the game uses both colors and symbols to indicate the resource type. They even use a different background color on the scroll with the city name to help distinguish the city types. In the picture below you can see the city marker for Mecca (the gold pot) with a gold coin next to it.

Antike could have been extremely fiddly and hard to pick up and play without such well designed components and human factors. There’s no cross-referencing and very little rulebook lookups once you learn the basics of the game as the information a player needs is right there on the board or on the cards. Well done!

Gamestorm Report part 2

2006-04-01T06:56:00.000-08:00

SATURDAY
We got started early Saturday morning at a great breakfast with Jeff DeBoer from Funagain Games. He has a lot of great ideas for upcoming services and products that he can bring to the market. Then back to the main gaming hall to set up some prototypes.

They’d given me a couple tables, which was great. I set up Isla Nova, a game about building infrastructure in a new community just preparing for new colonists to arrive. Just as I got that done, a photographer from the Oregonian showed up to follow-up on a story about Havoc: the Hundred Years War that was started last November. So we chatted a bit and I set up a couple other games we’re playtesting, Pizzza and Metro 2. William and Avery, selling their new Collectible Card Game (CCG) Konquer, dropped by for a test-play of Metro 2. While this game was not their normal cup of tea, they seemed to get how it works pretty quickly and finished a game in around 45 minutes.

After that, time for another panel with James Ernest, Richard Garfield and Dave Howell. This one was only attended by about 15 people, but it seemed to go well. It’s interesting that the bigger designers all have what they consider a “primary” test group, who they go to for first and biggest input. We all agreed on the value of conventions as a source of unbiased gamers, but it was pointed out that not all gamers enjoy or are good at play-testing.

Next up Chris ran several demos of Counterspy, a new 2-player game by our friend Kevin Nunn. It was received well, and played by people new to gaming as well as some die-hard gamers. Meanwhile, the CCG Konquer gentlemen gave me a demo of their game. This can play two or more and involves at least 15 “races” right now, each with nice back stories and art by the designer. The game also has a dungeon-crawl setup for even more flexibility which is good in the competitive world of CCG publishing. Then I corralled some folks to try “Sphinx of Black Quartz” which is a set-collection game based on pieces which taken together form letters and words. I still like it, but true to form it gained (at best) mixed reviews from the three people who played. Perhaps it’s more of a past-time than a game. (Or maybe it’s just past it’s time.)

I joined with the same panel gents for a packed-house panel on Prototyping. Each of us had brought boards, bits, cards and other examples of things we used for prototype games. My use of Excel for graphics, etc brought quite a reaction, even from the panelists, partly because it’s not really an art program. The graphic artist on the panel felt a good art program would get the same results much faster. On the other hand, Richard Garfield said that the Sharpie Pen is his favorite graphics tool. All in all, it was a great panel and everyone came away with good tips about materials for boards (tyvek hinges, mat board), cards (CCG sleeves, full size labels), bits (Lego, Risk armies) and boxes (recycle everything).

Early evening: 16 people in all showed up for or were cajoled into joining the first-ever Havoc tournament. We had the main players play two 6-player games, and four visitors played to learn the mechanics, etc. After comparing all the scores, the 12 main players teamed up for three four-player games to determine a champion. We had about half players who’d played Havoc before, and half had not.

We were lucky enough to be joined by a reporter from the Oregonian (local largest newspaper), who joined us for the whole tournament and took in a lot of the overall Gamestorm atmosphere as well. At the end of the evening, Phoenix from the GameStorm staff took home first place and a $20 board game. Second place went to first-time player Tyler Tinsley, who picked up Havoc as a prize. Other prizes were awarded as well, and it appeared that everyone had a great time.

SUNDAY
Several years ago we decided that Gamestorm needed peeping up early Sunday and started the Sunday Family Gaming event. This Sunday morning was great as ever. We had kids with their parents, parents without their kids and even a few loose kids trying out games like Looping Louie, Walk the Dogs and other family fare.

This year George Vriese put up a special Kid’s Games table with ours which was awesome. We saw Kids of Catan and several great Ravensburger titles on the table. Mike Deans also brought a variety of new games to his SimplyFun table, with titles like Drive, Zing!, Walk the Dogs and Plext available for trial runs. Luckily, I got Jeff DeBoer and his girls Emerald and Jade to try a game based on BadgeBadgerBadger.com along with Becka (a visitor) and Mimi Walker. That got played a few times, as did the copy of Diamant I added a test expansion too with sort of an Indiana Jones theme. Overall the three or four hours zoomed past.

Then a final panel, this time joined by Mike Selinker who’s now part of LoanShark Design with James Ernest and just published Gloria Mundi, which looks very impressive. This topic was on “Getting Published”, but seemed to just as much cover “How and When to Self-Publish.” It was great that most the panelists had started by self-publishing, and were in favor of new designers selling home-made models at game convemtions.

After that my final treat of Gamestorm was learning Richard Garfield’s Rocketville from the designer in a loose tournament setting. It’s a board game with 36 quick elections, determined by card play, with elections won netting you more cards, special cards or possibly area control which score points to win the game. A model rocket moves around to show where the next election happens, and there’s bit of luck in the card shuffle, but it’s all good fun and great retro graphics. The winners of the first games played a final, this time with supporter cards which make the game a little more meaty.

Overall a good time this year, plenty of new friends and contacts, a bit of learning and ideas for next year. If you weren’t there and could have been, plan now for the future!

Game Storm 8 Postmortem

2006-03-30T22:00:00.000-08:00

It turns out that my daughter had a mild case of pneumonia, so I didn’t have time to post last week. Fortunately she dramatically improved the night before Game Storm, so I was able to make it back to the convention after a one-year absence. Another Equinox miracle!

To put the critique below in context, keep in mind that Game Storm is manned by a group of volunteers, most of whom have been doing this for the last seven years. Objectively, it looked like all of the congoers were having an absolutely great timing accomplishing what they set out to do: hang out with a bunch of gamers and play games. That said, the following speaks to potential areas of improvements.

Location: I was bummed when they announced that they were moving across the river to Vancouver, but when I found out that the hotel was a short walk from the final stop of the Portland bus, I approached with an open mind. What a pleasant surprise - I love downtown Vancouver! It has that small city feel that I crave to return to. It felt like I went 20 years into the past – no cell phones, no face piercings, no general thuggery, etc. – although the area was a bit lacking in demographic diversity. Since the hotel sold out, I stayed at the nearby Hilton, which was just a cigarette away (that’s six minutes to you) and next to a large beautiful park that hosted a market on Saturday and Sunday. It was nice to get away from the gamer crowd – there was a seniors convention at the Hilton that weekend – and I like to pretend that Paris used the sheets just before I did (that might explain my current "itching" problem).

Compared to the previous location, the board game space was further away from the rest of the con – registration, RPG crowd, hospitality room – giving it the feel of a mini-con within a con, roughly the size and focus of BGG.Con. I definitely missed having the rooms that hosted the panel sessions nearby, as it was always worthwhile to pop in when between sessions. Fortunately, they moved the game library directly into the boardgaming room, whereas previously it required a bit of a hike to get a game and bring it back to the open gaming area. The biggest drawback compared to last year was not having smaller side rooms available for key boardgame events, such as KC’s two-player tournament. Overall, I though the previous site was slightly better, but I would prefer to stay in Vancouver again. Grade: A-

Logistics: The Game Storm crew had long perfected most of the logistic items (game library, registration, etc.), but where they made the big improvement this year was pre-registration. Not only did I pre-register with Paypal, but I was able create a schedule for myself under my account that I could revisit, revise, and print out. Although the staff was a bit slow in the initial setup of the boardgame room on Friday, I have no real complaints here. Grade: A

Eats: I was really excited when they introduced the hospitality room three years ago, but I was a bit disappointed with it this year – and I’m not just talking about the absence of frosting for the animal crackers. The availability of food and beverages was very inconsistent; I don’t know whether the cause was lack of funds or lack of runners. Unfortunately, there were no nearby restaurants akin to Jantzen Beach’s Original Joes (Bento/wrap joint), and the places that were a 10-minute walk away were hard to find. Fortunately, the farmer’s market had a lot of good options, including a great BBQ joint; however, there were no late-night options without traveling across the bridge back to Oregon. The Game Storm program booklet should have a map of the surrounding area showing food places (apologies if it is there already; I never read the program that closely). Grade: B-

People: There was a healthy mix of different types of gamers and games to choose from. Compared with previous years, there were many more Eurogamers. It’s hard to believe how far the hobby has come in the past six years. I have to say that I was wrong with the skeptical outlook I posted on BGG about there being too many events. Few events got cancelled from what I saw, although some events got a disappointing turnout while, as I wrote about previously, there was plenty of open gaming going on with the Eurogamers. It’s great that the hobby is growing, but I may be done with running events. I don’t want to have to predict what games folks are willing to sign up for; it’s just too much work for me to prepare for an event and lug games along. A big plus for the boardgaming crowd was how little eating there was in the room itself; one of the disadvantages to having restaurants nearby is that folks will tend to be more likely to be the food (usually consisting of vast quantities of grease and/or onions) back to the room. Grade: A-

Gaming: Easily the best opportunities for gaming of any Game Storm I have attended. Unlike previous years, there was a full crowd all the way from Friday afternoon through Sunday evening, including late night and early morning. There were Euros, abstracts, conquest games, fantasy games, “Ameritrash” - the whole range. The only knock against the selection is that most Euros being played were those released by American publishers (i.e., those I already have had an opportunity to play with my group). Compared to the national Euro-centric cons I have attended, it was difficult to find a more obscure import being played. Any issues I had with the quality of events were more than made up by the quantity. Grade: B+

In the final assessment, I would give the con a grade of A-. The slate of events was far from ideal, but the organization of the con kept things running smoothly. Most importantly, for three days, it got my mind completely off of home and work issues, and boy did I need that. Unlike most of my past gaming getaways, it will be the non-gaming moments that I will remember the most, such as the Denny’s excursion with GoE-mates Chris and KC. Our banter with the sassy Denny’s waitress - after we all ordered the same special - was a particular highlight. In the spirit of you had to be there:

W: Would you like identical desserts? Maybe milkshakes?
D: Do the milkshakes come with pancakes as well?
W: You wish they did.
D: (Yeeaaaah baby!)

My typical goal at Game Storm is to try out games that are new to me, usually outside the Euro genre. In addition to the below, I got in several prototypes, some by local gamers dabbling in design, others by local "professionals" who were pretty aggressive about roping folks into their demos. Below were my main events, listed in chronological order.

A Struggle of Empires that was not ideally planned for a couple of reasons. First, the GM was a Game Storm staff member, who had a lot of interruptions since the con was still undergoing initial setup. Second, there is a tendency for GMs to list available seats for a games as defined by the maximum number of players that the game is designed to handle; I went home early on Sunday evening to avoid a six-hour Age of Steam match, and I saw a six-player Tongiaki event going on at one point. In this case, we played with the full slate of seven players, which would have been okay except that only three hours was allocated for the event. Unsurprisingly, with mostly new players in the match, we didn’t even complete the second of three turns.
I had my first exposure to Sigma File (aka Conspiracy), which was a very pleasant surprise given the age and publisher of the game. I try to sign up at least once per Game Storm for an event being run by Andrew Nesbitt – one of the few GMs who have been there as long as I have – as he has a deep collection of delightful games from earlier decades. I fear that the design doesn't have a built-in way to force the action, especially as there is incentive to hoard money and wait around for others to pay their money for the assassinations. A fragile system, but I think it’s a cool little puzzler worth exploring further. It would certainly be easy enough to make a homemade copy (which I have no qualms about doing given its out-of-print status).
Next was an Icehouse event, featuring the recently announced Treehouse, and perhaps the most popular Icehouse game of all, Zendo. Treehouse was a decent-enough puzzle-type game, although our matches were far too chaotic and random given the number of players involved; I would like to try a 3p match before my final judgment. This was my first play of Zendo, and I was so delighted by it that I ended up running an impromptu session of it on Sunday while waiting for another event.
KC’s 2-player tournament had a disappointing turnout. Simply Fun’s Drive (aka Crazy Chicken) was intriguing once I figured out the “right” way to play it, although I wonder, independent of how aggressively you lay down sets, whether the best strategy remains to always hoard the highest possible values you know you have a shot at winning. I actually liked KC’s two-player Backgammon variant Versailles, even if the flow of the game was analogous to running up a down escalator. Having the tourney end with two of my favorites – Battle Line and Einfach Genial – gave me a chance to share my love of the game with the other players, even though I knew it pretty much guaranteed me the first-place prize. ;->
KC already wrote about the National Lampoon drug-themed game. A cute marriage of theme and design, but the game was too random and repetitive to be worth playing once the joke wore out.
Played in a late-night pickup game of King of the Elves. It is hard to win without a Gold card, especially with more than three players in the game. But it makes for a good filler in a social situation.
Started out Saturday by playing my first match of Antike. All the criticisms on BGG seem to be spot-on. One of the things that drives me nuts in multi-player conquest games is when the economic system detracts from what should be the primary focus: who is going to attack whom. Wallenstein was my previous star example of this phenomenon, but Attike might top it, as the numerous short turns encourages fast play centered around the mechanical production cycle. In a largely combat-free game, no temples were sacked in our match. As Greece in one corner, I came in second, while the player in the other corner won.
The highlight of the con for me might have been Dungeonville, a release from Z-man Games which features cute artwork and theme. You recruit characters to go out on adventures and find gold, which you then use to buy more characters, and so on. Ultimately, you want to start recruiting good fighters to go out and kill your opponent’s parties, which is the main way to gain VPs. However, good fighters are more expensive, will carry less gold back from adventures, and are more susceptible to booby traps (I assume due to their reckless bravado). There are enough elements that define a character to give the game sufficient depth. However, the default game as published has the players play to a low VP total, which gives the game poor arc as the obvious strategy is to buy the strongest fighters you can ASAP and just win a couple of quick fights. Clearly, a longer game with some ebb-and-flow is needed. Mike Selinker – who co-designed the game with James Ernest – ran the game and admitted as much, saying that his group plays to a higher VP total. Perhaps this explains all of the low ratings on BGG...
I have not played any of the big box Fantasy Flight Games products released in the past couple of years. As it was, Descent was the event that I was looking forward to the most, and it did not disappoint. I was given a ranged-combat specialist, and was then dealt the Rapid Fire ability and Ferret familiars to fetch me stamina potions which I could use to refuel Rapid Fire repeatedly. I was a killing machine even with a crossbow, but I soon found the Bow of Bone which made me even more deadly and at longer range. We had three ranged and one magic user in our party, so it was a pretty easy match. However, it was fairly long and repetitive, and I would imagine it to be pretty painful with a party mostly made up of tanks. It was a great con game, but I don’t think I would invest that amount of time to play this with my own crew. I may get it as an intro to D&D combat for my family, although the storage space requirements may prove to be prohibitive.
Although no one signed up for the single event I signed up to run - Celebrity Deathmatch Candamir Tournament - three folks showed up. The first just wanted to learn the Candamir game, while the other couple agreed to join us out of pity. What made the match so hilarious was that Legolas kept running into bears and snakes over and over again. Great display sportsmanship by the impacted player who took it like a champ. LeBron James was running away with the victory but Richard Simmons made a fierce comeback and ended up edging out LeBron, 10-9. It was an unusual match in that the deck of adventures barely got into level 2 (with level 3 a long ways off), and that two characters maxed out on XP. My biggest disappointment was that no one wanted to play my latest card: the infamous Katrina Looter (see below).
After Werewolf a couple of years ago, you think I’d have learned my lesson about signing up for midnight events at Game Storm, but I couldn't resist a late-night session of Mall of Horror. I ended up seated to the right of the start player in the first turn, so I predictably had to lose a character right away as the start player decided to announce that zombies would be storming the parking lot, causing all other locations to fill up. In the second turn, despite my being down a token to the other players, two opponents voted against me, perhaps as future leverage for bargaining with the third party. I then got hosed a third and final time a couple of turns later when I got stuck in last position again. I came back as a zombie the next turn only to get blown up by a shotgun, mercifully allowing me to leave the table. Still a great game, but it won’t be a great experience for every player in every match. Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy...
I arranged to meet loyal GoE reader Wes (really, do I need to mention the name as if there were more than one of you?) to play Crusader Rex. I played the Saracens in my first match and had a blast, so I agreed to play the Franks so that Wes could play the more exciting Saracens, and boy was that pretty dull. Wes’ extremely conservative play gave me a decent chance to win it - net consensus is that the game highly favors the Saracens - but it meant that I spent most of the game in a sit-and-wait mode. I still love the design, but will need to study more on how to play the Franks; hopefully there is an effective strategy which includes mixing it up a bit more.
The Rocketville tournament – ran by designer Richard Garfield – got a fair draw of 16 players, and I ended up winning the championship match when my final draw was the yellow card I needed to pick up four bonus points for two of the robots I collected. I give the game a Thumbs Up, if only for the top-notch presentation. This is a fairly pedestrian area-influence game with lots of random elements to it. However, unlike most area-influence games, this one is card-driven, and players will not be playing with equal resources. If you get decent cards throughout the game, there is plenty of skill in playing them to your best advantage.
Before heading home, I taught Chris how to play Scarab Lords. Then I schooled him.

Podcasting

2006-03-29T10:29:00.000-08:00

I'm the first to say that I think Podcasting is a great idea. It does for AM radio what the printing press did for newspapers - strengthen free speech while choking us on content. Just because you have an opinion doesn't mean that it's reasoned enough to broadcast. Rush Limbaugh is a prime example - most of his commentary is mudslinging. Disagreeing with Hillary Clinton is one thing, putting a chihuahua head on her body is childish and pathetic. I don't listen to Air America for the same reason, it seems that the only answer liberals had (once it was clear that reason loses to screaming every time) was to play the same game.

Now everyone, no matter how misinformed, can have their own talk show and niche audience. While it's a good thing in the sense that a hobby like boardgaming in the US has several podcasts from which to choose, but wouldn't it be nice to have a good podcast?

I've only listened to a few 'casts so far, but I'm having trouble finding one I like. The first one I heard was on the 'Geek, and I can't remember who did it. I distinctly remember them interviewing Jay Tummelson, who almost singlehandedly brought eurogaming to the US, and giving him a lot of crap for Fossil. To make things worse, they interrupted Jay repeatedly, who was giving his time freely (and did, to be fair, get to advertise his upcoming games, but most internet savvy gamers would be aware of what those are). While they weren't as bad as Rush, they were working on it.

Recently I tried out The Dice Tower, done by Tom Vasel [note: apologies to Tom for misspelling his name in the original post] and The Cranky Guy. I know, it's Joe Steadman, but boy is he cranky. Perhaps I could have done better than listen to the two episodes that featured the top ten most underrated/overrated games. I hate top 10 lists, as I feel that it is pretty much pointless to compare apples to oranges to kumquats, which is what any gaming list does (how can you really compare a wargame to a euro?)

The list of things I dislike about this particular podcast is pretty amazing. First, the humor is sophmoric, especially from Joe and whoever they let in the studio that day. It's like being trapped in a high school D&D session. Tom, to his credit, attempts to rise above the childishness, but it's a losing battle when you go up against the screamers. I'd listen to drive-time radio if I wanted this brand of humor. When you get people who do understand how to speak information clearly, like the guys who do the German and Boardgame news, their professionalism only demonstrates my point.

Second is the inability to pronounce game companies correctly. Dez Cartez is pronounced Dey-Cahrt, guys, just like the philosopher/mathemetician. That's the matter with Kansas, right there. I don't feel like you need to get the accent right, but at least get close. I certainly never get the impression that Joe is trying too hard.

But to be honest, I can live with these minor nits. What I do hate is the reviews and evaluations. Most reviews consist of describing the game's mechanisms, then saying they like it or don't. Very little qualitative information, just they don't like it. My favorite so far was Joe saying he didn't like Evo, and not just because of the theme. The politics of evolution aside (he must really hate anything to do with cavemen, as Evo doesn't even posit that people are the result of evolution), that was literally his only comment on the game. No "it's too slow," or "too chaotic" or "I don't like the neon colors", just "Ick". I know you guys are LDS, you certainly hit us over the head with it in pretty much every episode, but to dislike a game's theme simply because it doens't reinforce your worldview speaks volumes about one's insecurities. I'm not anti-LDS, although I do wonder how anyone gets involved in a religion found under a rock in upstate New York, but if I wanted to get a sermon on the evils of teaching evolution I'd find a different podcast. [Author's note: no one associated with The Dice tower is LDS. I made an assumption based on a couple of terms I'd heard used in the podcast to make an inaccurate guess. In fact, pretty much everything involving mentioning a specific faith should have been left out of the entry, but I am leaving it in place to avoid confusion and to avoid looking like I'm sweeping anything under the rug.]

Tom isn't much better, saying that he disliked Paths of Glory as it was too complex. It's a wargame, Tom. They are, by their very definition, complex, because they attempt to simulate, at some level, a historical event. Euros can simply use a historical theme and don't have that burden, so they require zero chrome. Yes, Tom claimed that the top ten list of overrated games was sort of a joke, but he might as well have included all wargames or none. Either way, saying something is "too complex" is like saying that since calculus is too hard we shouldn't teach it in schools. Not everyone will take it, but there are significant populations that should. If you don't get it, Tom, don't review it.

I can't even fall asleep listening to this stuff with all the snorting and chortling going on behind the scenes. It's like having lunch at a McDonald's close to a high school.

I understand that podcasting is a difficult and often thankless business (although there was a comment that Tom gets free games in return for his work on the Tower, followed by an awkward silence), and most people don't realize how much work goes into such an endeavor (I do, I've been a musician for decades and know my way around a mixing board). The basic truth still remains, however, that if you want to be a critic you should be good at it, and that includes having more of an opinion than "too hard" or "doesn't fit in with my religion".

It's really too bad, because I've enjoyed Tom's written reviews on the 'Geek, but listening to him talk has made me considerably less interested in his opinion regardless of the medium. And Joe? Yikes.

Yes, 'casting is a fledgling medium. Yes, 90% of anything is crap according to Sturgeon's Law. I'm just waiting for the 10% to start showing up in boardgaming 'casts. Perhaps audio is a poor choice for boardgaming, although if you think you don't want to hear boardgamers talking, you really don't want to see them. However, a well-done and well-produced 'cast, 30 minutes in duration, would take probably three-four hours to prep effectively, plus another hour of post-production. Perhaps this is what Tom and Joe should shoot for, doing 30 minutes instead of 60. Cutting out the top 10 list (is there any format more tired than this one?) would probably do the trick. And let's leave the snorty friends out of the taping session, hmm?

Guess I better do my own gaming podcast now or face the accusation of being an armchair podcaster.
[Author's Note: And, I better not be as cranky. This entry was too harsh in tone, although I stand by the issues I raise.]

Why I Love (2-player) Gaming

2006-03-28T17:05:00.000-08:00

My daughter Megan turned 2 years old yesterday. Needless to say, this is a big event for the all the grandparents. My mom flew up for the weekend, and Jodie's parents came by for the afternoon – dinner at the Old Spaghetti Factory, cake and presents afterwards, and all day Sunday was shopping with my mom in two stints – before and after Megan's nap.

As you can probably expect, it was a stressful weekend. Yeah, fun was had, but there was a lot of coordinating, explaining, chasing, etc. going on.

Still, Jodie and I found time for some games. A well earned respit, and it leads me to think about why I enjoy gaming in the first place: good mental exercises, good social experiences, and good clean fun. It's also a welcome escape when life is stressing you out.

And, on that note, here's what we're enjoying as two player games these days:

Roma
This has recently been Jodie's favorite game. (I'm sure in part because she beat me something like five straight times.) The game never plays the same way twice, and every strategy has a counter. (We've recently discovered we're playing with a hybrid of the rules fixes suggested to fix the Mercator. Our only rule change is that you can't get more than 6 gold in a turn.) We're up to 11 playings of this already.

San Juan
This is probably our current #2 game. We've developed very distinct play styles over the months we've played this (Jodie nearly always has more production buildings in play than me, but I nearly always build the 12th building.) We're evenly matched on this one. I haven't counted wins/losses, but I've played this game 54 times (according to my stats on the geek) and I'd expect no more than five of those are with more than two players. I'd guess whomever's in the lead hasn't won more than 5 or 6 more games than the other.

St. Petersburg
I actually think this game is best with two. We're well over thirty plays on it, and we're getting almost chess-like in our decision making. Jodie somehow manages to beat me in worker count more often than not, however.

Elasund
A new favorite. We've only got a couple plays in, but it works well. A nice game when we have a little more time. Which, unfortunately, hasn't been all that often lately.

6 Nimmt!
An old favorite. Great as a starter, or when we've only got 20 minutes or so and we're too tired to really think. We've played with the variant rule a couple times (only use cards numbered 1-10 x players+4) but taking the cards out of the deck is more trouble than it's worth. Plus, we'd never see that nasty 55.

Others we'll occasionally pull out:

Bohnanza, Alhambra, Crayon Rail Games, Cribbage, Attika, Ticket to Ride: Europe, Carcassonne (Jodie still likes the original with the first two expansions best), Wyatt Earp.

After we work through some of the games I've received this year, it'll be interesting to see which ones we come back to this time next year.

Gamestorm Day 1

2006-03-25T06:51:00.000-08:00

So I arrived at the Vancouver hotel around 3 pm, found the gaming easily , although sadly the board gamers are in a whole separate outbuilding from the rest of the Gamestorm convention folks.

I met a lot of old friends, and was quickly ushered into a Caylus game, picking up a game after a couple turns played by my friend Scott who had to take off. The game was fun although I had to re-learn as we went. My first three-player game, and overall still high marks.

Game 2 was Diamant with my draft expansions. Overall it was received well, just four of us playing, and the Cursed Temple expansion is still trailing the Three Artifacts expansion in popularity.

Then time for a quick check of the hospitality room before we set up for the Two Player Games Tournament. We did much more setup this year in terms of choosing and borrowing games, designing certificates, finding prizes (like Carcassonne Castle, San Juan, etc all sealed and new.) But we did less advertising - in previous years we haven't had to ... Well it finally bit us back, and only four people were there on time to play in the tourney. Maybe three other folks drifted in later and said they had signed up or wanted to play.

Our primary four played four games in all (all played the same games). First Drive by Simply Fun, one that Chris taught me tonight as the group learned it. Cute, I'd need to play a few more hands to see if I like it really. Then Versailles, a backgammon-style game of mine that seemed to go fairly well. Some players didn't care for (to wacky was the term I think!), and others (thanks Ken and Brandon!) really liked it.

Sidenote - while our main four were playing, at least three other games among people who shoed up late or just wanted in late were going on, including Battle Lines, Ingenious and Versialles. Now back to our regularly scheduled show ...

Third up was Battle Lines, played with the tactics cards. We had thought perhaps one round without the special cards (Schotten Totten) and one with, but it was pointed out that the two games would run to quite a length. And after that, Round Four was seeded based on winning scores and the championshpip game was... Ingenious!

dave beat Phoenix and claimed the first place prize. In the consolation round, Chris's son Jacob won his match and claimed a nice prize from our Prize Table. Thans to everyone who played, and sad we didn't have more. Live action Roborally, run by Richard Garfield the author (and of course founder of the Magic the Gathering phenomenon) might have pulled a lot of people, but who knows?

Then we were off to a quick dinner at Denny's, a fast game of Can't Stop with a pen-and-paper game board and the famous Chris Vest Dice that he now always carries. Back to the Hotel, and Dave and I got roped into OD, literally a game of trading and taking drugs first printed by the National Lampoon in the Sixties (our host Andrew Nesbet said). Cute game, but a bit slow. And the subject matter a little hard to swallow.

Finally we were rescued from planned overdoses and got to play three hands of King of the Elves with four players. Fun game, and fairly close going into the third round. Then Chris travelled around the world, collecting two gold cities (doubling those points) and collecting over 50 points in one round. dave and I threw in our hands, knowing we were nowhere close to that.

But still a fun ride and challenge, and the people, as ever, make the game. More games tomorrow, and I'll report on them and the panel talks next time.

What Was This Post About, Exactly?

2006-03-23T15:33:00.000-08:00

Another crazy week for me. I sang for a performance of the American Choral Directors, had an audition for an a capella vocal group (not the right group for me) with all of the prep work that goes into such a thing, getting ready to go to Victoria to celebrate my 20th wedding anniversary, and trying to do all of the other things that somehow I get roped into. And so, here it is, a pleasant Thursday in March in Portland, and I realize I've not done my blog entry.

Time for Stream Of Consciousness Theater! Yay!

...

I got bupkis. So, just ride with it.

A few years ago I got a speeding ticket. These things come in waves for me, usually I'll see two or three in a row, then nothing for years. Must. Find. Wood. To. Knock. On. There, all better. Anyway, in Oregon you get to send in an "explanation" with your fee, and they send half of it back. I can't imagine they actually read these things, but I'm sure that somewhere in the county courthouse there is a file full of the really good ones. So, I decided for this particular ticket to go through the various motions to see if being entertaining might get me a bit more of a refund. While I sadly no longer have the letter (it was written on my work computer at a job I no longer have, take that Capitalist Pigs!), it went something like this...

"Dear County Clerk,

I began writing my explanation, then thought that perhaps you might enjoy going through my thought process with me. While I am the first to admit that more than 20 seconds inside my head is likely to cause permanent damage to any outsider, I'll try to keep the noise down to a minimum..."

I then went through every "explanation" approach I could think of: Angry, Concilliatory, Dumb As A Post, etc. All in the flavor of "I could complain that I was not going the stated speed, that this was a saturation patrol for people driving uphill intended more to collect revenue than to prevent accidents, but that might come across as bitter." I ended by saying that I'd simply been going over the limit, although not at the speed I was clocked at (really, this was going uphill and I was in an old RAV4), and that I hoped they'd been entertained enough to give me a little more back than usual.

They did. No note from a clerk, as I'd dearly hoped for (I might have considered framing it had they done so), but I did get more like 75% back. More importantly, I believe I achieved my original goal and made it to The File. If anyone out there works for Multnomah County and has friends in the traffic renumeration department, if you could check on this I'd be grateful.

There was a point to this when I began...

Back in the late 80's and early 90's, Keyboard Magazine had a back-page columnist named Freff. Actually, Connor Cochrane Freff (IIRC). His head shot (that means a picture of his face, pervs) was actually of the torso of a marching band participant juggling two rubber balls. What was great about his columns was that they seemingly had nothing to do with music. Of course, that meant that they had everything to do with *making* music, albeit in about as oblique a way as possible.

One of the columns I will never forget concerned a story about young Connor, who was a starving something (student, bum, whatever), being invited to go to dinner with a friend who was a sci-fi writer. No one I'd ever heard of, but he seemed to know pretty much everyone who wrote sci-fi. And they were all there at dinner. Now Conner was a huge fan of these people, and to him this was a bit like an ancient Greek dining on Olympus with the gods. The only problem was that he had literally no money, and while he didn't mind just drinking water while his friend ate, he was definitely not cool with sitting there with a roomful of his favorite deities, and so he clumsily tried to avoid being seated with them by sitting out in the reception area. One of the writers who didn't know him, Philip K. Dick IIRC (and I'm sure I don't), came out and told him to come inside, and that he would buy young Connor dinner. Connor, trying to look like he knew what he was doing, made various excuses, but was pulled up short when the writer stopped him and said, "Son, never turn down a free lunch."

Words to live by. In fact, I myself never turn down a free lunch. Perhaps even more importantly, I never turn down the chance to offer someone a free lunch.

And it doesn't always mean "lunch" literally. The point of the article was that art is always based on the work that has gone before. Sometimes that means it's a pretty close copy, sometimes it means that someone has tried very hard to produce a work unlike anything they've ever seen before (and sometimes it works, most often it looks like what they were trying to avoid). It means that creating out of that heritage is a valuable thing, that it is not in fact stealing. In the Renaissance, composers regularly wrote "parody" works intended to sound like another composer (and Ravel did exactly the same thing in the early 20th century).

Point, Doug. You need a point.

OK, here goes.

That's what is going on in game design. We have a set of concepts, mechanisms, even themes that are used over and over again, often in a way that fails to engage us. New games are compared to what has come before, analyzed down to what works and what doesn't, reduced to it's component parts. We played Reef Encounter on Saturday, and while it seemed OK, I got the feeling that I was yet again disappointed that a game with good buzz was just another do this, get that, use it for this other thing game that I've already got 30 of.

In other words, sometimes a free lunch is not such a great idea, especially if it's at one of those $4 Chinese lunch buffets I went to too many of when I worked in tech. Too much incremental progress, not enough breaking of the mold. Too much repackaging of theme and mechanism, all to hope the game, however flawed, sticks in the public's imagination and makes money for *someone*.

The thing is, with literally hundreds of games coming out in the past five years, it's getting very hard to a) separate the wheat from the chaff, and b) have the time to even start the machine, much less try out a game like it should be. Single playings might tell you that something is a complete loser, but most of the time it requires time to differentiate quality. Wargames are less of a problem, as innovation seems to pop up every so often - look at card-driven wargames. A couple of games ten years ago, and suddenly they're everywhere, on every topic. And some do a good job.

But in Euros, aside from the fact that these games were essentially unknown in the US until eight years ago (and internet access wasn't as prevalent), there isn't that much innovation. I'm more influenced in my initial opinion of a game by undeserved screwage and by doing well as opposed to the actual quality of the game itself, so I'm leery of trusting initial impressions. And then it's off to the next shiny game and the once-played game ends up gathering dust or going to auction.

So why do I do this? Aside from the madness of possessing everything I see, that is?

Last night, Mike came by to pick up some games that were going to be used in a local convention for a two-player tournament. While he was here, he spoke glowingly of a recent session, two weeks old, where he'd gone so far as to title his report "A Sucky Day Of Gaming". Yet, he'd had a ball, perhaps as much fun as he'd ever had gaming.

You see, the games are only the excuse, the common ground that we use to bring our community together. It is the sense of togetherness, the trust, the genuine affection even for the guy wearing headphones and talking too loud, those are the real reasons we come together. We know that while many in the "real" world won't understand us, don't get why we'd ever spend time, much less money on these childish "toys" we are so enamored of, that in the end we are accepted by those we game with. That is, if you're lucky.

It is community that is the free lunch, the funny explanation file, the raison d'etre for all of these flawed games. Treasure it, nurture it, and above all, share it, and don't hesitate to trust it when you need to.

Somehow, I have managed to pull it all together, just like in Theology 101 term papers. Now that is a game that we should try to fit into a box. Next week, I will pull a rabbit out of my a**. I'll have to, as I'll have just gotten back from Canada the day before...

Burning down, with a session

2006-03-21T11:45:00.000-08:00

Burning down the unplayed games – a lite version for those counting calories.

I'm making steady progress in the number of games I own that I've never played. I keep track of these in four categories

Games I'll never play. The only reason I still own them is they're in storage and I haven't dug them out – there's 6 games in this category.)
Non-wargame expansions. There's now 9 items here, and six of them are Age of Steam expansions. Knocked one off last weekend (session report follows.)
Wargames including expansions. I have 119 items in this category, though that includes some miniatures games as well. This is the category that is going to see the most eBay activity from me over the next year. Many of these games I acquired more as reference material than anything and have no intention to play. Most, however, are going to be sold.
Everything else. Down to 22 in this category.

It's the everything else category that gets the most attention. Of course, it doesn't help that I've acquired 13 of those 22 games since the start of the year.

The nine games that I've owned since before new years that I've never played are:

1856
1860
Attribut
Cosmic Encounter
Druidenwalzer
Fjords
Indonesia
Labyrinth - Die Schatzjagd
Res Publica

That's a pretty manageable list. Chris and I (among others) have talked about trying out the 18xx series, so I'm optimistic about the first two coming off the list. Attribut will definitely get played at some family gathering or other. I'm bringing Indonesia to our Sunriver gaming retreat in a few weeks. Hopefully, it'll come off the list there. Jodie and I will end up playing Fjords and Druidenwalzer sometime soon, so I'm not worried about those.

That leaves Cosmic Encounter, the Labyrinth game, and Res Publica. None of these are really screaming "play me!" right now, and they haven't for a while. Of course I have the least desirable versions of CE and RP (the Avalon Hill version of CE, and the Avalanche Press version of RP) so they won't bring THAT much in sales. But I'm this close to putting them both on the sale block.

This Saturday I was able to host our monthly Saturday gaming gathering. Due to a variety of reasons, I haven't been able to host anything in a while, so it was refreshing to have the guys over for a few hours.

Dave and Chuck arrived a few minutes after 10, and we knew Doug would be showing up around noon, so we had tried to pick out a good 2-hour three-player game. We settled on the Italy map for Age of Steam (part of expansion #4.)

This expansion tweaks the standard rules a fair amount. Among the changes are:

No towns
No income reduction
You can issue shares at any time, but they only pay $3 unless you issue them in the proper phase.
You can build as many track tiles as you can afford, but you can only complete one link per turn, and cannot build incomplete links.
There are no black cities – instead, when you move a black cube it reduces the income of the link's owner by one instead of raising it.

There's a handful of other changes, but the above change the game enough to make it play very differently.

Once we got a couple turns in, the three of us were starting to get into the feel of the game. Early on, Dave and I had both started building in the north, and Chuck had the south all to himself – it was looking like Chuck had the inside track. Dave decided to contest the body of the penisula with Chuck, leaving me mostly alone in the north. About 2/3 of the game, I started charging to the lead, and it looked like I was going to pull off the win. As the game drew to a close, I ran out of high-payoff deliveries, and a timely black cube movement by Dave gave him what looked to be a bit of breathing space.

When the final tally came in, Dave had beaten Chuck 192 - 189 - 161. My big problem was the lack of built tiles – building in the north gave me a lot of deliveries, but it was a lot of short routes.

All three of us played relatively nice. We all had plenty of opportunities to move black cubes and reduce others' incomes, but we (mostly) decided to build up our own positions instead. As a result, we all had a lot of spare cash at the end. I could definitely see a more antagonistic game keeping the income WAY down.

All in all, this might be the best three-player map for AoS. The game was tight the entire time, leading to a number of tough decisions down the stretch. And we played it in under two hours.

After AoS, Doug joined us just in time to head off to lunch. Upon return, we cracked open Reef Encounter – a game none of us had played. To put it mildly, there's a lot going on here. You're trying to score points by building up and then eating reefs you grow over time. You do this by trading cubes for tiles and tiles for cubes (in varying types of color-agreement and/or placement) claiming reefs of a certain number of tiles with shrimp, and having your parrot fish eat the reef. There's also relative strengths of reefs (a white reef might be able to eat pink on this turn, but it will likely be changed later, etc.) At the end of the game, tiles your parrot fish have eaten are worth a point each plus a point each for every other color of tiles they dominate.

As you can tell by the rambling nature of the previous paragraph, I really don't fully understand what's going on in this game. Yet I won. (on a tiebreaker over Dave.) My initial reaction to the game was identical to my reaction to Antiquity. This is a game that has a lot of things working together, and it takes practice to figure out how it flows.

I'll definitely play it again (though probably not with four unless it's by email – way too much down time) but I don't know if I'll be buying this one. Breese's previous effort, Keythedral, and a game arc that is, IMO, way too short – this seems to be an overcorrection. It just seems to be a longer game than necessary.

After that, Doug had to take off (he apparently was up at the ungodly hour of 6:30 or something suitably lame like that :) ) and Jodie joined us for a quick game of Palazzo. Chuck won it relatively handily with Jodie second, me third, and Dave last. If there was some way to mitigate the luck factor on what tile gets placed in the center, this game would improve markedly. Maybe having to pay 10 for the newly-drawn tile no matter how many other tiles are there? Dunno. It's decent filler, but not one of Knizia's better efforts.

Rain Delay

2006-03-20T23:59:00.000-08:00

My daughter has a bronchial condition, a fever, and four rear molars coming in, so I am unable to dedicate time to finish editing any of my half-finished articles in the queue. Hopefully, things will clear up soon enough, and I can post in the open Thursday slot this week.

Seriously, I should work on these posts during business hours.

Setting Up a 2-Player Game Tournament

2006-03-18T10:48:00.000-08:00

We’ll be bringing back our annual Two Player Games Tournament to Gamestorm this year – in fact it’s next Friday! Since we designed it a few years ago, I thought I’d bring it out early in case some of our readers have some better ideas that will enhance any feature – organization, ease of play, fun, etc. I’ll be happy to work any input into the final setup that I can.

OVERVIEW
After we do some sign-in and orientation, up to 16 tournament players play four game rounds with a new 2-player game each round. Each round we offer a choice between two 2-player games, the games are taught, then contestants play 1 game. If time allows, contestants may play the “best of 3 games” between them. We tally scores and award prizes at the end of the night.

THE GAMES
We’ll have 8 games total. So far the list of possibles has a few extra so we can make a final selection based on what we can get at least four copies of. Our game group often supplies us with their home copies on loan, for which we are publicly grateful (even before the fact!).

Take It Easy – a new entry this year, played as 2-player, this should be fun.
Ghosts (Geister) – we’ve used this in the past, a simple tactical board game.
Can’t Stop – a Sid Sackson classic, again played as just two player – you win by achieving four columns on the board instead of the multi-player three columns.
Solodice (Choice/Einstein) – another Sid Sackson game, we supply rules and scoring sheets for everyone to take home. Both players use the same dice rolls but make their own choices on how to score them.
Lost Cities – a classic Knizia 2-player. We’ll encourage players to play to a given number of points.
Odin’s Ravens – of the Kosmos 2-plyer series, here’s another easy-to-teach entry that plays well.
Battle Line – another fine Knizia title, we’ll debate playing it without the military tactics cards (which I guess makes it nearly the same as Schotten-Totten except for deck size and hand size.)
Yinsh – a new entry this year, and a very popular title from the GIPF series.
Ingenious – another Knizia game, this time tile-laying, and usually multiplayer but should work fine for 2 players.

SCORING
This tournament uses a Swiss 4-round system and matches players with the same/similar Win-Loss record. A tie is scored as 1/2 Win – 1/2 Loss. After the four rounds everyone will have scores ranging from 4 wins 0 losses to 0 wins 4 losses. Ties will be broken by comparing the total Win scores of each player’s opponents. The tourney is really for fun, but we do get some very competitive people!

TIMETABLE
We try to keep the sign-up short, but people sometimes stumble in late, and we adjust as we go. We hand out first assignments and ask groups to pick one of the two games offered for that round. We’ll have one or more teachers for each game, and usually set aside about 15 minutes for teaching and 45 minutes for playing that game.

Then we tally scores while we introduce the next two games, hand out new assignments and teach and play. Wash, rinse, repeat, towel dry. At the end of the night we tally the final scores and hand out prizes. Gamestorm has donated some prizes each year, and we’ll also have some prizes from Sunriver Games and possibly some others.

PRIZES
We encourage all players to stay and have fun playing all 4 rounds of the tournament. We have prizes not only for the top 4 players but 4 prizes also for good opponents and good losers! We ask players to leave their tournament card with us (the hosts) if they have to go early. It goofs us up a bit, but sometimes it happens.

I think we’ve done the tournament for six years now, and it’s always fun. To those of our past players and champions especially, I hope we’ll see you Friday night.

Burndown Update, Geek Changes, Geek Apparel

2006-03-16T22:23:00.000-08:00

First, a quick update on my unplayed games burndown (original post, February update). I feel like I’m starting to make progress – some eyeball linear regression seems to give me a fighting chance of getting close to zero by the end of the year. Adding to my general good cheer is the fact that I didn’t just make progress on short games – I managed to play War of the Ring, Zero!, and B-17: Queen of the Skies in the past week. I’m hoping to get in a game of Manifest Destiny at GameStorm in two weeks, probably my best opportunity to get that played this year.

Did you notice that BoardGameGeek just revised its game rating system? I think the changes are definitely for the better. I’m curious about what Aldie has done to discourage shill votes:

Second: I've developed a secret system for dealing with shillers. I'm not going to tell you what it is, but suffice it to say that I hope it will weed out a great number of the shill votes from affecting the feel free to reratings. Don't worry... ordinary users won't have their votes affected by this. I don't expect to get many, if any, false positives on this system, and the number of voters excluded is very small.

Maybe someone will do some reverse engineering based on actual game rating data to figure out his model.

Check out how low Downtown: Air War Over Hanoi is ranked now: 6.7. This despite well over half of the ratings of the game at eight or higher. The 100 average votes tossed in really pulls down a game like this, which only has 81 ratings.

For a gathering of engineers, we don’t spend much time talking about technology. Most of us are self-admitted geeks, but if you had any doubts about me you are about to have all such doubt removed.

Some of you that see me in person may have noticed a black vest that I sport most of the time. I purchased it about 3 months ago, primarily for business travel. The vest is a Classic Vest from SCOTTEVEST (SeV), and is the ultimate in geek apparel. While geared towards gadget geeks, I’ve found it to be the perfect gamer/gadget apparel, doubling (squaring?) the geek factor.

My standard carrying gear includes keys, wallet, spare change, BlackBerry 8700c, iPod (when it isn’t in a crashed state), ear-buds, Moleskine reporter notebook, pen, and Bluetooth headset. Recently I’ve taken to carrying around a set of 10 tiny d6 for solo dice and other ad-hoc dice games. I’d like to add a tiny deck of cards to the kit as well, and maybe some small chips or gems for counters. What else should I always have with me? What is the perfect generic gaming kit that I could carry on my back? Maybe a Havoc deck is the perfect choice – there a quite a few games that can be played with it.

By the way, the vest is quite heavy (when loaded, not by itself) and I have to be careful not to wear it all day or else risk neck strain by late afternoon. Buyer beware.

A Bad Word, or Why I Love Red Sonja

2006-03-15T14:35:00.000-08:00

Last week, I used a Bad Word in my post. I (obviously) didn’t consider it a Bad Word, but then there are very few words that I use that fall under that rubric. I’m not going to tell you the word, although if you read both this and last week’s posts and still can’t figure it out for yourself, then we have some work to do. Plus, it's pretty much the last word in the post.

However, one person who read the blog considered it a Bad Word, or at least one that went beyond what he called a “line of decency.” This was ill-advised, as I’ve never met a line of decency that I didn’t at least stick my big toe over. To be fair, the complainer was not so much worried about the word in and of itself, but was instead concerned that this blog has a certain audience and that said audience could be offended and/or distracted from the blog’s mission by the use of this particular word. Me, I give you all a little more credit than that. And any 12 year olds (or adults for that matter) wading through one of my posts deserve a little titillation for their efforts, no matter how misguided.

When I was confronted about The Bad Word, my first thought was that gaming is full of images of scantily clad women (or elves, or orcs, or pretty much anything human or humanoid), especially in the fantasy milieu. Look at the recent release World of Warcraft. Where a female character is represented, they are with few exception well endowed, dressed for very warm weather with lots of strappy non-functional touches that somehow don’t make it into enough business wear. Their depiction is clearly sexist in the sense that they are drawn this way to garner interest from males entering (or persisting in) puberty. Sure, the male characters, particularly fighters, are physically exceptional, at least much of the time, but with the exception of the occasional barbarian in fur shorts, it's simply a double-standard.

I was raised in the 60’s with a mother and sisters who were determined that I not think of women as baby factories and domestic help. They were, to put it bluntly, successful. There is not a single job in my home that either my wife or I don’t do at some point - no “men’s work” or “women’s work”, although there are certainly jobs that I tend to do more often than my wife, and vice versa. I do not look at women in the workplace and think, “there’s a person whose one pregnancy away from an unfilled vacancy.” For the record, I try to have the same view about race or s*xuality. (See, I’m already thumbing my nose at filter software.)

Nonetheless, I put up with it. Even when male wizards are typically depicted as wizened old men while female wizards are young, nubile, and fully equipped in pretty much every conceivable way, I guess I simply file this dichotomy away as a cost of having a hobby where the primary marketing is aimed at wistful young male teens still working on getting that first date. Strange, as I think the real demographic is probably late-20-something high-tech-employed men, whom you hope would be past this by now. But here’s the thing... we aren’t.

I’ve given it away, haven’t I? Men, at pretty much every age past learning fractions (although there are still a few holdouts), like to look. We like titillation. Quite frankly, the huge success of the internet is largely the result of this quintessential male trait. More than anything, and to be honest this is one of the many reasons why my game collection is out of control, we like something new and different. Pretty much on a daily basis if at all possible. Sure, it's annoying to significant others in every corner of the world, but it's also what we are. Genetic diversity vs security is just another way to look at the battle of the s*xes.

This is not some culture-specific bias, although I’m the first to say that American Puritanism/Victorianism and its simultaneous overt abhorrence and covert encouragement of things sexual certainly exacerbates the situation. Look at the Victorians, who tried very hard to completely mask their humanity in being “proper” and ended up inflicting all of that id energy on the lower classes. Looking for an opportunity to sew an oat or two is hard-wired into men. It’s why there are six billion people on the planet instead of six thousand. Pretending we can be changed in this essential trait (other than through drastic surgery) is flat out denial. Certainly, we can tone it down a bit, but it’s there. Always. And because it’s there, there will always be marketing and products that will appeal to men that the target demographic will declare publicly to be Indecent right up to the point where they pick up a copy of Penthouse at the local convenience store.

All of that said, this is not why I buy games. I don’t sneak out of bed late at night, open up World of Warcraft, and drool over the character cards. If this was true, I’d own copies of every fantasy based RPG on the market, and probably quite a few others as well, and I wouldn’t be coming up on my 20th anniversary. I certainly wouldn’t own any wargames, which will occasionally show a Gaul with a Roman sword sticking out of his neck, but certainly never cheesecake - why violence is so accepted in American culture but s*x isn’t is one of the things I simply will never understand. I’m all about how the mechanisms work together, how well the game evokes a theme, how the story of the game evolves, and most of all how much fun I have playing it with good friends. While I’ll agitate for quality of components every time, Elven booty isn’t really something I spend a lot of time on, although I do have to admit that I was terribly disappointed when the Harvard Lampoon’s parody Bored of the Rings didn’t contain anything involving the teaser passage in the front of the book, although I spent years trying to find it at 13. I know about teens still working on that first date, you see.

What would be terribly interesting, at least in theory, is to see a fantasy game involving female characters that didn’t play up on their, urm, physical assets. Make female wizards old and wizened, it works for the guys. I mean, women are supposed to be smarter than men, but a forty year head start on basic spells? Female fighters aren’t going to get much protection from a steel bikini, although they probably get all their drinks paid for at the local tavern. They should look like female versions of their male counterparts, at least if the goal is a realistic representation (even if they are comic-book versions of real life). I would love to see the marketing data on such a game, assuming it was as good a game as anything else out there in the same niche.

At the same time, until such time as gaming becomes more than a refuge for the geeky and socially inept male in the US, I see it as a relatively harmless, if not strictly necessary, evil. Yes, I’m aware of the various arguments against the objectification of women, yes, in most cases I agree. However, almost all of these arguments stress reinforcement of thought patterns, not creation. Until we accept our humanity and the biological imperative, objectification will continue. Pretending we hate our bodies and how we came into the world has always struck me as particularly hypocritical.

When you think a bit more, you realize that we are all objectified. When I was an undergrad, I was pretty non-descript, and most people would ignore me after they met me. In more than a few cases, though, once people realized that I had more than a little musical skill, there were quite a few people who were much more interested in getting to know me solely because I was a good musician. Sadly, the only “excitement” that this strategy got me was an evening with a groupie in Albany, OR that makes for a pretty entertaining story but was a) ill-advised and b) I really was trying to avoid the situation. Really. Oh God, I hope my mother doesn't read this...

Men do horrible, horrible things to women every day everywhere in the world, and I think that the world would be a much better place if they didn’t. But to say that our culture is worse than other cultures, even with our hyper-sexual advertising industry, is to show one’s ignorance. Repression rarely does anything other than divert energy in a different direction, usually one that is much harder to control. Thinking that banning steel bikinis will do anything useful is wishful at best. As such, so long as the same demographic that purchases super-hero comics buys fantasy-themed games, we’ll continue to see hot orc high priestesses, and frankly I’m cool with that.

This should make for some interesting comments...

Standing over Here

2006-03-14T14:37:00.000-08:00

This past Sunday, six of us got together and played the new GMT multi-player card-driven wargame Here I Stand (HIS). Doug has already blogged his session report. I want to add my perspective (since I came in last...) more in the form of a review.

Title: Here I Stand: Wars of the Reformation 1517-1555
Designer: Ed Beach
Publisher: GMT Games
Retail Cost: $79.00

Here I Stand (HIS) is a game based on the Protestant Reformation. The six sides (“powers”) are the major players of the time – the Ottoman Empire, the Hapsburg Empire, England, France, the Papacy, and the Protestants. The minor players (Scotland, Genoa, Venice, and Hungary) are handled in a very strict, procedural fashion. The idea of the game came from the old SPI (?) game A Mighty Fortress. This game acquired the nickname “A Mighty Tortoise” as it was apparently VERY slow moving. I don't know, as I never played the original. I preordered this game the day GMT put it on their p500 list, and I've been anxiously awaiting its release ever since.

The game, at its core, is the same multiplayer card-driven wargame engine used in The Napoleonic Wars. But it's about there that the similarity ends. The rulebook is very clearly written. In fact, after our initial playing, we only had one rules question, and one known botched rule. Both of which were extremely minor. The rules are 44 pages with 23 sections. However, the length is due to the extremely clear, procedural method in which they're written. Everything you can do in the game is explained in a step-by-step, annotated process. And that's a very good thing as no two powers can (or want to) do the same sets of things. There's even PBEM tips printed in the scenario book.

What impresses me most about the HIS design is it is highly asymmetric. Not only does every power have a different goal, everyone has different ways of acquiring victory points. And every indication is that things are highly balanced despite this.

To get a sense of scale for the following discussion, you should know that the game ends automatically if someone has 25 victory points or more at the end of a turn. (There's a maximum of 10 turns in the full game.) The starting VP levels in the full scenario range from zero (for the Protestants) to 19 for the Papacy.

Everyone (except the Protestants) gets victory points for controlling “key” cities. The Protestants get points for controlling the six Elector cities in Germany instead. In fact, controlling enough key cities produces an instant win. They're also the primary determining factor in how many cards you receive each turn. So, military objectives tend to revolve around capturing and holding these key cities. Every other power gets additional VPs in different ways:

Ottomans: up to 10 VPs for piracy.
Hapsbugs: mostly through operations in the New World.
England: in addition to New World operations, England gets 5VPs for producing a male heir.
France: New World operations and up to 6 VPs building chateaus.
Papacy: keeping cities Catholic, burning Protestant debaters at the stake and expanding St. Peter's Basilica
Protestants: converting cities, translating the bible, and disgracing Papal debaters.

There are also VPs awarded for winning wars, and a small number of cards can give extra VPs.

The turn sequence is relatively straightforward:

Bring in any new items scheduled to come in that turn, roll for New World riches (these are usually additional cards, i.e. Resources), and deal out a fresh hand of cards.
Diplomacy – this is the only time “secret” deals can be hatched. At the end of this phase each power must state if there were any deals reached that change the game state (i.e. ending wars, etc.). You can also sue for peace or declare new wars in this phase. At any other time, all diplomacy must be at the table.
Spring Deployment. You can move one formation of troops from your capital to pretty much anywhere within your domain.
Action phase. This is where you play the cards in your hand. This goes in sequence (the same order in which I listed the powers above) until everyone passes.
Wintering. All troops head for the nearest fort, or your capital.
Resolve new explorations and colonization attempts in the New World
Check for victory.

The action phase is similar to most other CDGs. You have a hand of cards, and every card has both a value (in command points (CPs) – think action points from Tikal, etc.) and an event. When you play a card, you choose which way you're going to play it. If played for the event, generally you follow the instructions on the card, and you're done. (The exception is Mandatory event cards – these must be played for the event, AND you get the 2 CPs to spend afterwards.) If you play the card for the CPs, you then get to spend the value of the card in actions as listed on your individual player mat.

Every power has a different subset of actions they can perform. England, France, and the Hapsburgs can explore the New World, for example – the Ottomans can't. But only the Ottomans can commit acts of piracy. The effect is that the game plays very differently for each power. In addition, each power has a “home card” which must be played each turn and then returns to your hand for the next turn. These are all 5 CP cards (the maximum) in addition to having powerful effects. Finally, depending on your specific power's current ruler, you may be able to hold one or two cards from one turn to the next.

The net effect of all this is that it feels like there's sixty-seven different things going on at the same time. England is trying to produce an heir, but is feeling the pull of reform. The Protestants are busy translating texts and publishing books as fast as the Papacy can burn them. The Ottomans are stomping through Hungary and raiding ports right and left. The Hapsburgs seem like they're everywhere, and France is busy admiring their chateaus – even the ones in Louisiana. Amongst all this chaotic activity you end up with some unlikely alliances – France and the Ottomans seem to ally frequently, as the Ottomans are the best at harassing the Hapsburgs thus keeping them off France's back. England needs Papal help for a while to get a divorce in order to get multiple attempts at an heir, but then turns into a papal enemy after breaking from the church. And so on. We didn't touch much of the diplomatic aspects of the game in our first play, but it can get very deep. Particularly later in the game when someone is approaching an automatic victory.

Obviously, the game has a lot of flavor. It's also best with all six players (though it handles 3-5 as well and the designer is working on 2-player guidelines) and good, deep six-player games are a rare thing. After our first play, we had only one rules question, and it was a “what if” for an event that wasn't played. Amazingly, we only broke one very minor rule. This is saying something considering the number of different subsystems interacting in this game. We spent a good 45 minutes to an hour walking through the game before play, and this was when all of us had at least read part of the rules. We played four turns, as recommended for a first go, and this took between four and four and a half hours. It's estimated that the whole game, once everyone knows how to play, will take around 7-8 hours to play, and that seems accurate. There's also shorter scenarios, including a “tournament” scenario designed to be played in under 3 hours. Given that the 3-player game has you playing two powers at once, I could see the three-player tournament scenario being playable on a weeknight. Rare for a game like this.

As you've probably gathered, there's a significant investment of time required to play this game. For me, the investment has paid off handsomely. As an example, I'm currently participating in a PBEM game (as France) moderated by Ed himself. We're just starting turn two, and already I'm seeing the side efffects of diplomacy. The Hapsburgs and I decided to end our war, and I had made my plans for the turn. However, I was greatly surprised by a formal alliance between the Hapsburgs and the Papacy resulting in the Papacy having full use of the Hapsburg fleets for the entire turn. This may significantly change my plans, as I am the only power with whom the Papacy is at war.

It's always dangerous to rate a game after one play. However, given the fact that everyone involved had fun and wanted to play again AND we ran into effectively zero rules problems, it must rate very highly. I'm wavering between an 8 and a 9 on this one. It'll probably end up a 9 in my book for the primary reason that you can get a significantly different experience playing the game as a different power. The Protestants and the Ottomans are really playing two completely different games at the same time. And it all just works. It really is a masterful design, and I think we'll be seeing this one both selling out and reprinting rather quickly.

I do have a couple minor nits. There isn't a player aid that has the turn sequence printed on it, so you've always got a copy of the rulebook floating around turned to that page. (This is being corrected, however.) There aren't any siege markers. But beyond that, GMT pulled off a well-executed production.

If you're looking for a deep multi-player wargame that plays smoothly, or the theme interests you and you're not turned off by 7 hour games, give it a shot. You'll be pleased with the results.

March Potpourri

2006-03-13T18:00:00.000-08:00

In response to the others’ posts for last week’s Question of the Month, I noticed that, while everyone delighted in picking apart what constitutes a “series”, no one else other than Eric addressed the second part of the question (“What would you like to see next in the series?”). I added this part to make the QotM less mundane and elicit some creativity, but what else should I expect from a bunch of engineers? To make up for this, here is a bonus answer.

I collect all of the Mystery Rummy games, although I am no big fan of Canasta on which they are largely based. Other than Jekyll & Hyde (and Wyatt Earp, the unofficial entry in the series), I would not feel the need to own or play any of the titles if they were released outside of the series' context. What I do like is watching how the designer Mike Fitzpatrick morphs the system to fit the newly chosen literary/historical background. However, each subsequent setting has stretched the boundaries of what I would call a “mystery” (the last two being the Chicago gangland and Bonnie & Clyde). I would like to see the series return to something more conventional.

I’ve been reading a lot of Agatha Christie novels this year, and who better than her to mark the return to the series' dark roots? Evil Under the Sun and Murder on the Orient Express both have plot twists that could be modeled with this system, but the best choice for a Mystery Rummy setting has got to be And Then There Were None (also published as Ten Little Indians). It would take ten suits (or eight if you omit the servants), and you would have to have a mechanism to “kill” suits.

I enjoyed KC’s whimsical take on Havoc spinoffs - I would be the first in line to purchase HOVAC - but I thought he limited himself too much by just using the short name. Just look at the inspirational material that comes out of the full title Havoc: The Hundred Years War:

A HEAVYHEARTED WORD CHURNS
Don’t be fooled; it’s just another “Dictionary” variant.

WHETHER A CHEDDAR UNSAVORY?
One of those rare games that comes with an expiration date.

ADVANCED HEW YOUR THRASHER
Once you learn the basic wing-clip maneuver, the basic game loses its luster.

SHY HEADHUNTER, CADAVER ROW
Guide the introverted protagonist thru social situations and zombie slaughter!

A HORNY REDHEAD: WHAT CURVES!
What was I talking about again?

I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to sift through the seemingly endless anagrams for other feasible titles. Don’t be discouraged; I’m pretty sure there’s a decent Charades game in there somewhere…

Speaking of Havoc, I have to this point been noticeably (or perhaps not) silent on my opinions of the game. That ends today! After ~10 plays, I give the game a solid Thumbs Up. This rating encompasses scores from 7 (“Good game, usually willing to play”) thru 5 (“Average game, slightly boring, take it or leave it”), and my opinion of Havoc has wandered throughout this sub-spectrum over time, settling on the halfway point. I have a dislike of the card drafting mechanism in general, although here the card selection strategies and tactics are more sophisticated than found in most other games that employ card drafting. The choose-your-battles aspect works well, even though it loses the strategic planning element found in similar games that use a board and thus introduce a spatial aspect. I find the way battles play out to be a bit tedious; the tactical elements (e.g., bluffing) are practically non-existent due to card memory and the fact that playing half of a run/set usually leaves the other half worthless in your hand.

All that said, I think the game is above-average in terms of skill – and, yes, I consider memory a valid and acceptable skill – in the drafting. I win more than my fair share, but most of my victories have been against new players lured by high-valued cards; in these games, I usually finish strong with straight flushes across the lower ranks. While I do not experience the same “fun” factor that so many other players do, I think the game is somewhat underrated in terms of depth.

With more experienced players, I find lots of little subtleties in the drafting, often discovered in the post-analysis my own poor play. In one match (which I believe had the full complement of six players), I was aiming for a high-rank straight flush due to being initially dealt most of the cards. I quickly collected the others, except for one card right in the middle of the run. I soon realized that the player to my immediate left was collecting cards of this very rank. So, I had to wait until the first reshuffle to see whether my card was in someone else’s hand, still in the drawpile, or already in my opponent’s hand. Unfortunately, it turned out to be the latter. I jumped into too many battles hoping he would join in and play the card for me to retrieve with a Dog (as he was to my direct left, I could only speculate when he would join), but he kept passing and I ended up hurting for cards in the endgame. In retrospect, I think I should have either abandoned my strategy the moment I knew that he was collecting the rank, or, even better, started collecting the rank myself, in which case he would have been more likely to play the weak set in an earlier battle.

While I was happy to unload so many games at the Rainy Day Games auction this year, sales were somewhat disappointing this year (~$8/game mean compared to last year’s ~$11). Even more disappointing were the number of items I had to bring back home due to their not receiving the minimal bid. Perhaps, with the glut of games and limited number of buyers, everyone was content to return home with a mere handful of bargains; not only did they not feel the need to compete on items, but it curtailed the impulse buying of more obscure titles. The most surprising item of mine not to get a bid was a Wizard Kings bundle (base game plus expansion maps and two expansion armies with a minimum bid of $25); most popular titles have no problem getting sold at 33% retail value.

On the other hand, I failed to help matters any by my not participating in the bidding myself. The problem is that I don’t like to buy used games. I haven’t bought a single used CD ever since leaving school. Although I prefer to buy new copies of books, I do check out ~50% of my reads from the library due to storage limitations (and to abate my Excessive Consumerism Guilt).

Speaking of used games, I used to be a bit unsettled at the practice of middle-class games raiding thrift stores and boasting of their purchases online. I thought the mission of these stores was to make the “donations” of privileged community members available to those less fortunate. It turns out that I was far off the mark. The primary objective of these organizations is to use the store sales to fund more meaningful programs to help “disadvantaged” folks get a leg up, not just to simply help them accumulate “stuff”. It seems obvious now, but I thought I would share that with other folks not in the know. That said, they should implement a policy to jack up all boardgame prices so they can get more money off of you cheapskates! I hate to think about how little that box of Eagle Games we donated to the Veterans Association pulled in…

Series and Parallels

2006-03-11T08:04:00.000-08:00

It’s interesting that we all have different takes on this month’s question – and I appreciate my compadres covering pretty much soup to nuts on what is and what isn’t a series. To take it as a metagame, I’ll cover my votes in each of several areas: Themed Series, Shrinking Series and Format Series.

THEMED SERIES. These are the games, mostly of the modern boardgame era, that share a theme or a common set of resources. I agree with Dave on this one – the group of games relating to the original island of Catan by Klaus Teuber is my “favorite” series overall. I like StarFarers of Catan with its plastic rockets, the basic Settlers game with Seafarers, and the Settlers card game, including our four player version which uses two sets of the two-player card game.

In second place, I’d have to go with Mike Fitzgerald’s Mystery Rummy series: #1 Jack the Ripper – #2 Murders in the Rue Morgue – #2.5 Wyatt Earp (this game, though not part of the official series, looks like and acts like) – #3 Jekyll and Hyde – #4 Al Capone – #5 Bonnie and Clyde (not yet released). My favorite for two players is #1, but for a multi-player game Wyatt Earp is very good.

For the Carcassonne series in third place – my top picks in this line are the Castle (two player), and Discovery (multiplayer) for people new to the board game genre.

Here are some other series that came to mind, but didn’t make my list:

Risk – Castle Risk – Risk 2010 – Risk Godstorm – Risk Lord of the Rings – etc. A many-years-between series, some better than others. I like the new elements in Lord of the Rings, but it’s becoming harder to recognize it as Risk.
Amazing Labyrinth – Master Labyrinth – Secret Labyrinth – Labyrinth the Card Game – 3D Labyrinth. Mostly for kids, but a great base mechanism.

And here are a few others that are series of a slightly different ilk:

Tikal – Java – Mexica; the so-called Kramer Keisling tile trilogy
Euphrat und Tigris – Samurai – Durch die Wuste; the so-called Knizia tile trilogy
Can’t Stop – Gold Connection (Can’t Stop 2) – Sid Sackson classics on risk management
Bazaar – Bazaar 2 –Samarkand – Another Sid Sackson classic line. Bazaar II was never published as I understand it, but most of it was re-tooled into Samarkand.

OK, time for a snake’s tail (and a nod to John Crowley). What would the other games in the following “five letter” series be titled? (Answers at the end of the article.)

#1 A game about Medieval battles and the Dogs of War: HAVOC
#2 A board game where you try to trap your friends in the gold mine while you escape: CAVOH
#3 A board game based on the movie Saw, but with a Russian theme: ___
#4 A party game where players try to sing songs and sound “just like the original artist”: ___
#5 A card game where players are working girls who clean offices on weekdays: ___

SHRINKING SERIES. These are games that started life as board games and were later modified, greatly or gently, into card games.

Elfenland became King of the Elves – I like them both, and they feel like different games. I’d rather play Elfenland, but it’s definitely bigger/deeper/longer.
Settlers of Catan became Settlers of Catan the Card Game – I like them both, and they feel like different games. The card game can take a really long time to play.
Puerto Rico became San Juan – I like them both, and they feel like different games.
San Marco became Canal Grande – I like San Marco, but have not played the other
Euphrat und Tigris became Tigris and Euphrates the Card Game – I don’t think the card game is better in any way except for portability.

FORMAT SERIES. I had not thought of these as series until Dave mentioned the Alea boxes and the Kosmos 2-player boxes. In this line, my favorite is a nostalgia vote for three classics by 3M.

The Bookshelf series, with Acquire, Bazaar, Feudal and Twixt to name a few.
The Butterbox Series, with Monad, Venture, and other Sid Sackson classics.
The Gamette series, with similar titles to the Butterboxes, including High Bid, Sleuth and Foil.

And here’s the answer to the "5-letter series" quiz. Let me know if you think of other possible titles in this same series.
…
1 HAVOC
2 CAVOH
3 HACOV
4 COVAH
5 HOVAC

My Favorite Series

2006-03-10T14:13:00.000-08:00

I love going next to last on these QotM. At least I’m writing something this week!

One question I’ve struggled with this week is “what is a series”? One definition of series is “similar things placed in order or happening one after another” – a wide open definition that I plan to narrow. Eric at least attempted to frame his response, ruling out the Kosmos 2–player line as a series (it is a product line), and calling out the Carcassonne games as a canonical example. I tend to agree with Eric, but I’ll add a few more criteria to add some precision:

A game plus a set of expansions isn’t a series. It is a single game system with expansions. I wouldn’t consider Magic: the Gathering or Duel of Ages a series.
A set of games marketed as a product line doesn’t necessarily count as a series. I think there needs to be more of a unifying theme or system involved than just a marketing brand. Many will disagree with this – for example, some would point to the Alea Big Box series of games. I just don’t agree that those games have enough in common to be considered a series. Just my opinion.
There should be something unifying about the games in the series beyond the size of the box, number of players, or publisher. Examples here include setting (the Catan universe, Carcassonne) and mechanics / game system (the GIPF series, card-driven games).
Most likely the games will come from the same publisher, though a notable exception is the Command and Colors series that have been produced by a wide range of publishers (GMT, Days of Wonder, Hasbro).

Given these criteria, here are my favorite series.

3. Carcassonne – While there are a number of expansions for this game, it is truly a series given the number of stand-alone entries that share the same core theme and mechanics. My favorite by far is Carcassonne: the City, and I much prefer to play any of the games in the series with only 2 or 3 players.

2. GIPF Series – My favorite abstract games by far are in the GIPF series – I’ve played all of them except, surprisingly, the original GIPF.

1. Block Game Series – Though started and still dominated by Columbia Games, GMT Games has jumped on board with the release of Europe Engulfed and the soon-to-be-released (hopefully) Fast Action Battle: The Bulge and Asia (Pacific?) Engulfed. I simply love how I can learn a base set of mechanics and apply it to a wide range of historical conflict settings. This is strictly true of the non-Columbia games, but the basic mechanics of hidden information, laying your blocks face up for combat, and rotating the blocks to represent strength, are present in all of the games (as far as I know). I still have several unplayed games in this series but (of course) hope to knock those out this year.

It is very likely that the Commands and Colors series will creep into my top 3 or 4 after I’ve played the new GMT release a bit more – that might happen this weekend. While it feels like a block game (because it has, well, wooden blocks), the blocks are just representations of what used to be miniatures in the other entries in the series. No hidden information, no rotating blocks.

But Series-ously, Folks...

2006-03-08T17:40:00.000-08:00

Oh, the puns are flying fast and furious now, eh?

When I think of the word "series" I'm usually thinking of television, books (especially the 800-page-per-volume fantasy series), porn, and Darlington Pairs (an electrical engineering reference I've been unable to purge in almost 20 years of life where, to my knowledge, the idea of cascading transistors has had no conscious relevance). I haven't really thought of games as being a series, although Dave pointed out several. Like him, I picked up the Kosmos two-player line for a long time, giving up when they charged me $20 for Crocodile Pool Party (actually not a bad little game, but an awful lot of money for a few pieces of cardboard). I also have all of the GIPF series, despite have almost no two-player activity other than wargames.

Dave also mentioned a few wargames series, linked by a common publisher and basic ruleset. There are lots of these, partially because it takes a lot of time to develop a historically accurate wargame for much less return. When you consider that "much less return" is compared to a successful euro-style game such as Havoc!, you see just what a labor of love this is for most of the designers out there.

In my case, my own preference would tend to be toward the Card Driven Game series, originally published by Avalon Hill in their We The People game, followed up by the ACW title For The People, then promoted in spades by GMT with more titles than I care to type in. There are many reasons for liking these games, among which I'd list relative ease to learn and enjoy and the unpredictability of the card distribution, but perhaps the biggest reason is that the fact that socio-politico (and occasionally, religio) elements of any historical period can be incorporated into the cards rather than the mechanisms. These games almost regularly get me interested in a period of history I know very little about, and I tend to pre-order pretty much any title that features this particular game element.

While other series (such as the Standard Combat Series from the Gamers) try to leverage a system into many different conflicts, and typically do a pretty good job of doing so, most of the time these games don't really give me any new insight into the period, but instead simply mean that I can learn a game more quickly (other than having a new version of the rules every other game, plus remember whether a rule lives in the series rulebook or the game-specific rulebook). The CDGs always give me additional insight, or at least spur me to search out the reference material the designers used. Twilight Struggle got me to read Gaddis' "Cold War: A New History". In this particular case, I learned that the author really liked Ronald Reagan (it is very hard to take any research seriously when the author talks about how canny Reagan was during the period that he was falling asleep in meetings around 1987), although most of the book was pretty interesting, if a little disjointed and light.

In euros, I'm surprised to say that I find series a good thing. While I'm a bit concerned that the Settlers franchise seems to be making forays into games that have had problems (Candamir, Elasund, both of which flopped with our group), I am quite impressed with the staying power of this franchise. Our group tends to like vanilla Settlers (in moderation) and some of the Das Buch scenarios. Carcassone, which started as a very light game, has evolved into some great titles, such as Discovery and The City.

On the downside, series can tend to perpetuate mediocrity, a growing problem in the hobby. While some good games come out, it is obvious that we are getting more games that see one or two playings at most, and very few that could be called classics. The new E&T card game looks to be an example of a series that is going the wrong way; a fantastic first game, part of what is perhaps the most successful (both commercially and operationally) series of all, Knizia's tile-laying trilogy that includes Samurai and Through the Wastes.

On the Ameritrash front, games like Duel of Ages, which I found to be a very straightforward game with a lot of historical fluff stapled on, had tons of expansions. Usually, I'm a real fan of this sort of thing, I got most of the Cosmic Encounter expansions back in the 80's (even the, God help me, moons). With my huge haul from the recent Rainy Day Games auction, I was sorely tempted to purchase the second edition of Runebound with all of it's expansions, but having been fooled into purchasing the original edition, I just couldn't give FFG money for this particular product. Had they been willing to give me an update kit at a decent price, perhaps, but they've lost my custom in this particular case. Strangely, I am willing to buy the Doom expansion, which turns a crap game into a good one (although i may just get the rules online)...

All of that said, in every case (other than CDGs, which are really more of a mechanism grouping), I could care less whether or not the game is part of a series. I'm much more interested in a good gaming experience than in having every Settlers game (I've sold off my Nurnburg and Cheops/Alex expansions). Sort of like porn...

Unfinished Melodies

2006-03-07T13:50:00.000-08:00

(Apologies to all in the delay posting - my recent Vegas trip really messed up my perception of what day of the week it was...)

Interesting that I'm taking a different take on “series” than Dave. His definition is a lot looser than mine. I don't consider the Kosmos 2-player, small box games a “series” as such. To me, they're a product line. The Carcassonne games? That's a series.

There's something about a series that makes it safe for consumption. In most cases, you already know the basics about how to play, but just want to see what new twists have been developed. Plus, it's a safer outlet for producers. Just look at Hollywood and the computer game industry. Series sell. You've already got a built-in audience, and you drag in folks that heard about, but missed, the first one.

As a result, we've got a fair share of series in the game industry, too.

What ones are my favorite series, and what would I like to see next in them? Here goes. (Fair warning: As I play a lot of wargames, and my definition of “series” is a bit tight, this is going to be a rather wargame-heavy list.)

Panzer Grenadier
I know Dave (and another gaming buddy of mine) just sold their collections of this series, but I still like it quite a bit. Lots of interesting puzzles in the large number of scenarios. Avalanche Press already has a number of games already on the drawing board. (Road to Berlin, and three biggies in their Classic Wargames line including a WWI game) but I'd really like to see a 2nd Battle of the Bulge entry that focuses on the 2nd week (and later) of that battle. IIRC, every scenario in the existing game is during the first week of the offensive. Something where the Americans are pushing back the bulge would be good.

I'm always up for more Desert Theatre games as well. Lots o' tanks running around in open space is always good fun.

Commands and Colors
Ancients just came out, looks to be the best of the three games, and the first expansion for it already has over 350 preorders in less than two weeks. There's a lot of designed expansions for C&C: Ancients in the queue, but I'd like to see this series taken to the medieval/early renaissance timeframe. Between the Hundred Years War, Burgundian Wars, War of the Roses, and Italian Wars, there's a lot of material for good games. And some that are actually even balanced.

Musket & Pike Battle System
There've been people asking this series to be moved forward up to the Nine Years War and the League of Augsburg. It could probably even work for the Great Northern War, but that might be a stretch as tactics had changed quite a bit by 1700. Once the remainder of the major Thirty Years War battles are covered, I'd second the request for the League of Augsburg. Some Polish battles would be great, too. (and I know Ben's got some coming in either the upcoming game or the next one.)

3W Quad games designed by Rob Markham
Could someone start publishing games like this again? Please? I know I've mentioned it before, but it's an underserved market...

Carcassonne
I'd like another two-player only game in the series. (The Castle did NOT go over well with Jodie.) Something, perhaps, where you have the option of moving tiles not part of a completed structure instead of drawing a tile. Neues Land added the ability to pull meeples off and score before a structure is complete, and that adds a whole new layer to the decision process. It's becoming my favorite in the series.

Formula De
Just want to see Asmodee get this all sorted out and get the base game and most recent track pack back in print.

Whirled Series

2006-03-06T23:00:00.000-08:00

My head is spinning from cold medicine, so please forgive me if there is a noticeable drop in coherency relative to my normal ramblings.

For all the moaning board gamers do about CCGs, we sure like our series, don’t we? Some like the challenge of seeking out the last obscure title to complete a collection; others get a visceral thrill out of seeing a full set of Alea games stacked next to each other; yet others like to speculate – or at least anticipate – what will come next in the series. We are all guilty of this sick consumeristic phenomenon to some extent, so how ‘bout you cut us CCG players some slack, ‘kay?

I have gotten a lot better at not collecting series. I abandoned collecting everything in the FFG Silver Line and Kosmos 2-player series long ago, and am now actively selling existing games in these series. I just dumped two collections (Panzer Grenadier; Down in Flames) at an auction and spent the money to complete my GIPF series. In all of my favorite series listed here, I have yet to complete the collection and really have no plans to, but I still eagerly await each release to see how the concept or vision further evolves.

Third Place: Fantasy Flight Games HexPlay Series
Twilight Imperium (3 editions); Battlemist; Thunder’s Edge.

I am a big fan of the multi-player conquest game (MPCG) genre. While FFG has been releasing more elaborate productions to greater acclaim, I have a soft spot for their earlier releases. The three titles feature Settlers-like tiles to create unique boards with each play and have a similar “create units which are sent out to grab more sites which generate resources which are used to create units which are sent out to…” design.

Twilight Imperium (space opera background) employs the most straightforward approach, which undoubtedly explains why it received two reworkings while the other titles were not. In my opinion, all three editions suffer from gameplay taking too long given the limited maneuvering that occurs. However, I have enjoyed play-by-web TI2, both has a GM and a player.

Battlemist (Tolkien fantasy) has the strongest theme, but the design consisted of two subsystems which did not fit well together. Additionally, the rules were unwieldy, and the horrible imbalance of the racial powers was worsened with the otherwise appealing sea-based expansion. I doubt this will get re-released, given the massive amount of development that it would have to undergo to match the quality of their latest releases, and considering that their Warcraft title fills the fantasy MPCG niche in their catalog.

Thunder’s Edge (sci-fi military) had the weakest theme of the three by far; instead of having a handful of richly themed races like the other games, they created several factions with little background and abilities that had very little impact on the game itself. However, the exploration element was intriguing (hexes were only revealed when units were sent to surface) and the combat system is still my favorite in any MCPG I have played.

Second place: Kosmos 2-player games
Avalon; Babel; Balloon Cup; Caesar and Cleopatra; Crocodile Pool Party; Dracula; Druidenwalzer; Elchfest; Finale; Gone Fishing!; Heave Ho!; Hellas; Hera & Zeus; Jambo; Kahuna; Lord of the Rings – The Confrontation; Lord of the Rings – The Duel; Lord of the Rings – The Search; Lost Cities; Odin’s Ravens; The Reef; Rosenkönig; Tally Ho

This series has been a mixed bag, especially in recent years. However, I just cannot resist those tidy little packages; I have purchased every title on that list except for Crocodile Pool Party. Kosmos always does a great job with graphical presentation, and I am always on the look out for great 2-player games.

Babel is the only game in the series for which I currently have a Top Shelf rating, but most of the others are solid Thumbs Up titles, many of which – Odin’s Ravens, Heave Ho!, Lost Cities, Jambo – will get a lot of play due to their accessibility and replayability. While I have given a few these titles a Thumbs Down, Avalon and die Pyramiden des Jaguar are the most likely candidates to be given a lesser score if I were to increase the granularity of my ratings. Also, two of the Lord of the Rings titles (The Search and The Duel) are among the very few games that I decided to trade immediately after reading the rules (i.e., I have never actually played them).

While this series has neglected my two favorite themes – Ol’ West and Pirates – to an extreme, my choice for next game is a 2-player design of Jerry Dziuba’s that I had a chance to play at BGG.CON last year. Everything about his game – theme, game weight and length, number of components – fits perfectly in this series, and the theme and mechanisms, while not being true originals in the gaming world, are definitely unrepresented in this series. I have no doubt that, with further plays, it would reach the upper tier besides the likes of Odin’s Ravens. You, Kosmos man, get on it!

First place: Klaus Teuber’s “Catan” series
The Settlers of Catan; The Seafarers of Catan; The Cities and Knights of Catan; Settlers of Nuremberg; The Settlers of Catan – Historical Scenarios; Settlers of the Stone Age; The Settlers of Catan – The Book of Games; The Settlers of Catan Card Game (+ several expansions); Starship Catan; The Starfarers of Catan; Anno 1503; Candamir: The First Settlers; Elasund: The First City of Catan

Okay, throwing Anno 1503 in there is arguable, but it is derivative of the card game and has a similar feel to the Catan Adventures games that were released soon after it. I think I count 35 different ways to play Settlers up there; I would be perfectly happy – instead of our current smorgasbord practice – to play one of those a week, and then restart the cycle on the 36th week. The only Top Shelf titles there are “vanilla” Settlers (the original board game without variants) the Settlers card game sans expansions, and The Starfarers of Catan. What makes the base Settlers the most attractive to me is the length of play; I believe much of the game is determined by your initial placement, and I just assume see it play out to its conclusion as soon as possible and then give it another go. I have played the card game more than any other non-CCG (~70 plays). Starfarers is unique in the line in that the open space really allows you to dynamically and drastically change your strategies mid-game.

The only titles in that list that I have given a Thumbs Down to are Nuremberg, Starship, Settlers of the Stone Age, and Elasund; I think that Nuremberg and Starship are overly restrictive in terms of feasible strategies, that Stone Age has a slight leader problem (and a major “trailer” problem), and that Elasund is more than a bit dull. Still, I would be happy to play any of those if someone were to request it. All of these titles dangle the possibility of a lucky run in front of the players, and this is something I really enjoy.

Now, I’m not sure the world needs anything else Catan – although I suspect someone else will pick up the baton after Klaus “retires” – but, since they already did a pirate-themed expansion for Anno, how about an Ol’ West expansion for the card game? I’m thinking a self-contained expansion, built around more uses for gold. Instead of Knights, you would have Deputies and Outlaws, with the Knight’s Tournament become a shootout. Example buildings:

Trading Post: Once per turn, trade one gold for one resource of choice.
Gambling Den: When an Event comes up, you may spend 1 gold and roll d6; on 3-6, gain two gold.
Brothel: When you win a shootout, gain two gold.

I could go on all day with that.

Honorable mention: The Magi U. series (unpublished, untitled)

This is my own system for which that I have designed three games already. The background is Magi University, a school for wizards-to-be which is more Unseen University (Discworld) than Hogwarth (Harry Potter), though it predates my exposure to both. There are five sources of magic – fire, water, earth, light, and aura, the latter of which is the most powerful yet unpredictable source – and the games share a hand management mechanism whereby players have to decide how to spend their mana via spellcasting. The three games I have designed are a maze game (freshmen hazing ritual), quest game (graduating seniors looking for jobs), and an economic game (faculty at the marketplace trading for supplies). The series highlights how I use theme to drive game mechanism decisions in my designs. Not even I know what will come next...

Question of the Month: March

2006-03-05T22:00:00.000-08:00

Being the first full week of March, each blog entry this week will answer the following question, provided by Dave: "What are some of your favorite game series, and what would you like to see next in them?" Those of you playing from home can use this entry to post your own answers!

Panels at Gamestorm

2006-03-04T10:46:00.000-08:00

This year at Gamestorm (March 24-26, 2006) Sunriver Games has been invited to sit on a few panel discussions about the game business and game development. I haven't done many panels, so this will be an interesting experience. First off, I know that panels at game cons aren't always well attended, so I don't have hopes of reaching thousands, but the panelists themselves will be worth meeting and hearing.

Here's the guest list for the panels I'm on:

Richard Garfield, best known as the creator of Magic: the Gathering and Roborally. Since I was re-inspired to get into gaming after learning Magic back when Fallen Empires first came out, I owe a lot to this gentleman. OK, true, it also cost me thousands (!) but that's not Richard's fault! I was also an early fan of Roborally, and even though it's long when played by inexperienced players, it's still a classic.

James Ernest, founder of Cheapass Games, those famous black-and-white games under $10. My favorites are US Patent Number 1 and Light Speed. Many of his games have a sense of humor. I met him at previous Gamestorms, and he's a genuine boon to the whole game industry.

Dave Howell, one of the original staff workers at Wizards of the Coast Wizards and often a frontman for Cheapass Games at conference. Dave taught me Ben Hurt for money a few Gamestorms ago. He's also a principal in the Seattle Book Company these days.

The Panels:

Game Design 102 Playtesting Sat 13:00 1 hr
For this panel, I think I want to cover some of what I've written about lately, my sense of best practices for playtesting, the kinds of questions that playtesting should answer, and some small history of Sunriver's successes and failures with playtesting.

Key issues here are being ready for real playtesting, good prototypes and player aids, treating platesters and their input with respect, and knowing what your goal(s) for the playtest are.

Game Design 103 Prototyping Sat 17:00 1 hr
I'll plan to take a bunch of my prototypes along as visual aids. My belief is that peple will much more likely try a new game and give better feedback if it looks good and if has been tested for basic playability before you ask friends or strangers to play. While playtesting may be different in a bigger company like Wizards, our usual playfields are game conventions, game nights and friends' living rooms.

I'll also include the concepts of playing prototypes on computer, such as using simple Excel spreadsheets as a testing ground, and creating functional player aids, sometimes in lieu of needing to create full rules sets. If the author or the company os presenting a prototype, I think it's less important to have full rules sets unless the idea of the playtest is to specifically test the written rules for completeness, clarity, flow, etc.

Game Design 201 Getting Published Sun 13:00 1 hr
This panel I clearly know less about, since my experience so far is really just limited to one company-published game. And to get that we created the company! But maybe that perspective is helpful since we are so new to the gaming scene compared to Cheapass Games and Wizards of the Coast.

I can talk about the history of Havoc: the Hundred Years War from where the ideas first started, through working toward a publishable set of rules, mechanics and artwork. And I can fill in with our "marketing plan" that took us to Essen, our contact with distributors and making our first bulk deal with Funagain Games. Essen included meeting some industry "giants" like Queen Games, Abacus Spiele, Bruno Faidutti, Friedemann Friese and others who may be our next step in publishing partnerships with Sunriver Games.

If you're planning to be at Gamestorm, feel free to drop in on any of these panels. I think the other folks on the panel are definitely worth hearing, and I'm happy to have friends or hecklers just show up!

Why I Play Games

2006-03-03T12:38:00.000-08:00

As I've mentioned on my own gaming session recap site, I have a good friend that was recently diagnosed with ALS, or Lou Gehrig's Disease. In six months, he has gone from a healthy, active 42 year old to a man that can barely hold his head up when he sits. He is about to lose the ability to communicate via voice and e-mail as his motor skills steadily deteriorate, and I fear that he has less than two months to live.

I visited him in Denver last week, and despite his condition he is fairly upbeat. Part of his inner strength comes from his faith, which is something I won't get into here, but I believe that an equally large part of it comes from the incredibly large number of people who have been touched by his friendship and have contacted him. As he himself put it, "When something like this happens to you, you realize that all we really have are our relationships. Everything else falls away." He will die knowing that he is loved and remembered, and that is all any of us can ask for.

I have said this more than once, but I think it is important enough to say again: Games are all about who you play with. More than that, life is about who you live it with. I have been fortunate enough to have been involved in many different communities over the course of my life, and my current game group is one of my favorites. It is the people that make our Sunriver retreats so much fun, and despite my prediliction for buying anything on the shelf I don't own, the reason that I have made gaming a priority in my life.

And so, I send this post into the world, exhorting all who read it to recognize and nurture your relationships, whether they are gaming-based or not. Cherish those moments when the world falls away and it is you and your friends and family having fun, and carry those memories into the times when you will need that strength. And, if it occurs to you, look up that old friend or cousin that you keep meaning to contact, because one day it might be too late.

Very Short Week

2006-02-28T20:23:00.000-08:00

Sorry guys... nothing much from me this week. All keyed up for our trip to Vegas (we leave in 15 hours - woohoo!) and don't really have anything prepared.

I was going to make some comments on the controversial Essence of Euro-Style Games essay published a few days ago by Lewis Pulsipher (designer of Brittania, among others) and how it relates to my eurogames vs. wargames post a few months back. It's a topic I've been meaning to return to, but now I'm not entirely sure I want to tread on those waters. If you're on the spielfrieks mailing list, you know exactly what I mean. Next week is Question of the Month week, so I'll save it for later.

For now, I just have the following quote about that article: "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." (Inigo Montoya, Princess Bride.)

I also have a comment about the local auction KC blogged about on Saturday. Let's just say it's not the most monetarily efficient means for disposing of unwanted games. (I sold 7 games, all but one in print and 3 of them in shrinkwrap, for a total of $45.) And I've got about 23 suggestions on how it could be better run.

I'll be writing next week's column in a post-Vegas haze, so I have no idea what you'll get :) (Anybody know of any decent game shops down there? Can't hurt to take a look.)

Open Gaming vs. Scheduled Events

2006-02-27T23:09:00.000-08:00

A good reference point for this post is this article by Valerie Putnam (whose "Pros & Cons" tag is so clever that I had to drop my own series moniker which was quite lame in comparison). In it, she discusses the merits of open gaming with respect to tournaments. The one format her article overlooks is the scheduled event format. This format is most common in local conventions (e.g., Portland's Game Storm). Volunteer Game Masters sign up to run events of their choosing, and a schedule is created from these events (here is the current Game Storm schedule under development). Con-goers then select events from the schedule to attend; perhaps there is a sign-up sheet posted during the con so that attendees can ensure a reserved seat.

As Game Storm has grown over the years, I have observed more open gaming occurring. At the same time, I have seen more scheduled events cancelled due to lack of interest. Here are ten tips on how a Game Master can make his event more attractive and ultimately more successful; good events are an important factor in getting folks to attend future events by the same GM.

When creating an event, look for a spin to make your event more attractive. I once ran a Lord of the Rings event using the "Corrupt Hobbit" variant (similar to the traitor mechanism in Shadows Over Camelot). Another time, I copied the historical information behind the spaces of Merchant of Amsterdam and had the players take turns reading the information as we progressed. You don't have to do something as outrageous as Celebrity Deathmatch Candamir to give your event extra appeal; at a minimum, make the game description a bit more sexy than Jay Tummelson's attempt.
Aggressively work with the Board Game coordinator weeks in advance to ensure the schedule is balanced and fair. Do not assume that the coordinator will actively adjust the schedule. If someone is running a three-hour game in a two-hour slot right before your own event, have it fixed. If there is a glut of events being run at the same time, find a sparser slot and have your event moved. The reason you want to do this as early as possible is because con-goers often like to plan their itinerary before they arrive, and they may be disappointed by surprise schedule adjustments.
Know the game. Reread the rules before the event and master them. There is one GM whose events I will not attend because of one event where he did no prep work and I had to assist with the instruction.
Go to the Geek. Research player aids, FAQs, and so forth. Do whatever it takes to make the playing experience more enjoyable. For example, I created a chart for La Citta to track population and food totals for each player, making it easier to assess the board situation at a glance.

Prepare how you plan to teach the game. Consider putting an outline on paper and going through a dry run. Realize that the learning styles of folks at the cons may be different than those with which you are most comfortable; likewise, your teaching style may be unfamiliar to some of the participants. Be patient and flexible when teaching it.
If possible, do not play in the game. This should be your preference. Only play if you feel that the extra person will make the experience that much better; for example, if I were running El Grande, I would play if exactly four others showed up, as it truly shines with the full complement of five. Stay by the table to answer questions early on, but aim to become invisible by the end of the match. Avoid excessive commentary, and only consider giving strategy tips when asked.
Make sure the previous table is cleared off a few minutes before the start time of your event. If it looks like it isn't wrapping up, identify the GM and work politely with him. If necessary, find the appropriate con official to resolve the situation.
Keep the pace of the game moving. Get a sense of whether the game is on track to complete on time. Hold the group to moving at the appropriate pace; I once ran a 6-player game of Liberté (with all new players) in a 2-hour slot, and contend that it is possible with a disciplined GM. When appropriate, announce progress against schedule. For example, if I were running El Grande (which is structured into thirds) in a 2-hour slot, I would report at the end of the first scoring round how ahead/behind we are of our 0:40 target.
Keep the mood friendly. The most talking I will do at an event I am GM'ing is when trouble stirs. I have had to deal with frustration, impatience, grumbling, and interpersonal conflicts. Not being an actual participant in the game makes this moderation all the more effective. In a con setting, "it's a learning game" has been the star phrase in my toolbox.
Make sure your own table is cleared off a few minutes before the start time of the next event. Remove all trash. Straighten the chairs and smooth out the tablecloth.

Last October, I talked about potential problems introduced by the presence of scheduled events at an open gaming con. There are other problems created when open gaming occurs at a con centered on scheduling events:

It discourages mingling, and encourages cliquing.
It can lead to events getting cancelled. One evening, you may decide to play Caylus instead of Event X after some waffling, but what if others made the same decision about an Event Y you were interested in?
If events are cancelled, GMs will be discouraged from running as many (if any) events in future years. The worst part is that a GM for a cancelled event not only spent all his prep time for naught, he is also at high risk of not participating in an event (open or scheduled) himself. This is a pretty bitter pill to swallow.

In summary, GMs owe it to others to put a little extra work into their events, and attendees owe it to others to participate heavily in the scheduled events. On the other hand, if the majority's preference is for open gaming, I would hope that the con officials are working to collect this feedback and morph the con accordingly.

The Auction Results

2006-02-25T21:59:00.000-08:00

Well, we all had a good time today at the auction at Rainy Day Games. I took out 10 games, and only 6 of them got bids, but that's OK. I also spent $23 on a bunch of games, and came hope happy with my loot.

What didn't get bids. Liar's Dice 6 player $5.00 (minimum $9 on the Geek) - I guess this wasn't the copy that someone was waiting for, although it was a pristine copy. Also with no bids were Disorderly Conduct at $1.00, then Outwit at $2.00 (3 others just like it) and Nightmare the Video Game $5.00, although an Atmosfear (essentially the same game) went for $15.00.

What did sell. Adel Verpflichtet sold for $6.50, on the Geek it sells for about $12. Can't Stop sold for $12, on the Geek it goes for $22. Evergreen sold for $5.00 (sealed), and $17 new on the Geek. San Gimignano sold for $5.00, goes for $25 on the Geek. Overall I'd say folks that bought my stuff (thank you!) still got pretty good deals compared to what they would have paid on Boardgamegeek.

What I brought home.
Bang: Dodge City $2.00, $7 on the Geek. This adds some new things to Bang!, a game my kids like. It lets 8 people play the game as well.

Venezia around $5, around $15 on the Geek. I played this at Doug's house, complete with pigeons fighting over the palazzo in Rome. Fun, interesting action selection.

Thunder's Edge around $5, sells for about $20 on the Geek. I played this at Dave's house on a Saturday some time ago. Since I have an expansion for it, this might go into the sale pile with the expansion if I decide it's not quite for me.

Targui around $3.00, around $20 on the Geek. Variable board, nice artwork, some elements of RISK and some typical to area control games.

Penguin Ultimatum Around $2.5, around $10 on the Geek. Since we like Monkeys in the Moon a lot, this was an easy ine to bid on. In this case, you're hiring talent to display their best efforts for the Penguin Emperor and his court. Plenty of wacky fun.

Termitenspiele $1.00 (thanks Peter!) An Edition Perlhuhn game by Rheinhold Wittg. From the rules, it's hard to tell what's going on but essentially it's 4 sets of 16 cubes (heavy cardstock) that show termite trails along 6 sides and get lined up in various puzzle-style games.

Laguna Around $5, $15 on the Geek. Franz Vohwinkel art; a beautiful game about pearl diving and catching currents around the islands, which may or may not help you get the pearls home.

At these prices, these are easily games that if they get played even twice they're worth the price, and they are all decent enough to pass on to other gamers if they turn out not to be on our top shelf list. It's not about making money though. If I want to sell games, clearly Ebay or Boardgamegeek is a better option.

I appreciate Stave and Amy at Rainy Day for running the auction; what a great way to boost the store as a "serve your customers" place. The pizza and the beer next door were alos good, but mostly because Chris Brooks gave in and did "Back in the USSR" at the karaoke bar for all of us.

And to all my buddies there, it was gret to see you and see you again soon at Gamestorm.

Solitaire's The Only Game In Town

2006-02-22T15:50:00.000-08:00

I'll be very impressed if anyone can tell me the musical source of the title.

Like a lot of gamers, there have been times during my life when I've had to resort to solitaire gaming to get any gaming at all in. The longest stretch was after I left high school (college was all about RPGs or drinking games) up until about seven years ago, a stretch of around 18 years. I did get a little ftf gaming in during that time, but the vast majority of the gaming I did was solitaire, and then only when I could find enough space in a small apartment to actually leave something set up.

The reason I "founded" Rip City Gamers was because I discovered the Euro market and found that solitaire wasn't much of an option. At the same time, card-driven wargames started becoming popular, requiring an opponent (and ACTS hadn't really taken off yet). Try playing El Grande solitaire, it requires a real desire to succeed. Much of what I love about Euros is the tension of not knowing what your opponent will do or where they are in relation to your own position in terms of victory conditions. As such, playing Euros by myself has pretty much become an exercise in learning the game so that I can later teach it.

Recently, I've been playing World of Warcraft solitaire. The game is very playable solitaire as is, although managing four players on your own can get a little confusing from time to time, especially with a game a variable as this one. I've been impressed with the solitaire changes suggested on the 'Geek, and that got me thinking about how one might find ways to make Euros more fun solitaire, which is to say "at all". I'll skip such obvious games as Al Cabohn, which are specifically set up to be played solitaire.

Bidding - Like a lot of mechanisms, this can be simulated by setting reasonable bids by each player, then dicing to randomize them a little. Downside is that you have to think about every position's bid, which can be a real pain. Blind bidding, such as found in games like Aladdin's Dragons, is pretty much out if you want to play each position, although you can completely randomize the process for all but one player. I personally don't find this all that much fun. Continuous bidding, where players bid around the table until all but one pass, is also difficult to do unless you treat is as a "max bid" and use the general bidding scheme. Again, this loses much of the excitement and flavor of the mechanism. This is perhaps the biggest solitaire killing mechanism out there.

Guess What I'll Do - I personally love this mechanism, where one player picks one of a set of possibilities, and the other player tries to guess what they picked. Choosing a defense in Pizza Box Football is a classic example, although in most games it's a less pervasive element. The answer is to have a set of rules that govern what will happen under certain situations, and in fact PBF provides that exact situation while providing considerable uncertainty. For games that don't have an AI provided, I'll generally pick which of the possibilities are most probable, then dice for them. In the end, I generally feel like I'm just playing the odds rather than gauging my opponent, which again removes some of the fun, although PBF is so based on the dice that their system doesn't really change how the game feels.

Hidden Elements - This is usually cards, but it can also be a variety of other things, such as tokens in Samurai or E&T. Even with cards, the specific mechanism will determine if this is solitaire-friendly. Settlers, for example, is generally pretty solitairable, although you lose some of the tension surrounding development cards. Paths of Glory is somewhat less so, unless you are willing to play with randomly drawn cards (although you really need to look at the combat cards ahead of time, reducing the tension a bit). Hannibal is patently unsolitaireable in it's existing form, mostly because of the Battle Cards, although that process can be reduced to a simple CRT. In fact, someone did that very thing with the original Titan game, removing the Battleboards/lands completely. It makes the game playable within two hours, although one might argue that it loses a lot of the fun (if you aren't watching someone else fight). However, with a game like Dungeon Twister, the cards are easy to use: just draw combat and action cards randomly and they all even out in the end. In general, the more cards that can come up, the less solitaireable the game will be. Command and Colors: Ancients works well too, and often you don't even have to randomize the cards, just "forget" what your opponent has in hand.

Trading - This is actually fairly doable, even with games like Civilization. Some things can be randomized, but in general it's not too hard to just pretend to be two people trading cards. You know that someone is going to get a nasty-gram from time to time, but that's true in the ftf version as well. I played this solitaire a lot when it first came out in the AH edition - my parents had gone to Europe for a month, and I was stuck out in the sticks without much to do. However, the more involved or elemental the trading is (such as Bohnanza), the less interesting. The original Civ made it pretty easy to simply compute the value of each trade to both parties and try to equalize it as much as possible, but this isn't as easy with a lot of games.

Of course, solitaire isn't really ever meant as a replacement for ftf gaming, it's more of a story (at least for me). Seeing how the game unfolds is really the payoff, not so much winning or losing. That's the fun in soloing WoW or Civ. There is very little fun in handing your opponent a particularly sweet screwage move when you are your opponent, sort of like sticking it to the Man when you are the Man. Regardless, I'm unlikely to play games like Civ or WoW with my existing group, they simply are too long for the number of people involved, so playing them solitaire is the only way to get them on the table.

A brief look at Conquest NW

2006-02-21T13:27:00.000-08:00

Late Sunday, I returned from the Conquest NW convention in SeaTac, WA. The show ran through Monday, but the portions I was most interested in ended Sunday, so I trundled home.

Some thoughts:

I did well in my DBM tournament. Finished 2nd out of 8. (Last year, when there was little cost associated in playing, we had 22 players. This year, 8 bagged out in the last week. Go figure.) Only game I lost out of four was to the guy who finished first (someone I've never beaten in competition). I've now won 10 out of 14 games with my Later Swiss army (6 of 9 in tournaments). I think I'll be sticking with this one for a while.

This convention was VERY lightly attended. They'll be lucky to have hit 250 total attendees. I'm sure much of that had to do with poor advertising. The miniatures room was usually full, but no other room was even at half capacity. The boardgaming room, in particular, was practically empty, and at best 1/4 full. Kind of sad – they must have lost a bundle on this show. However, they've apparently noticed things they did wrong, and they're really looking forward to making things better next year. Our tournament will likely be back, so I may try to make it a four-day thing and support other parts of the show on the other days.

Shows like this provide a STRANGE mix of people. You have hard-core historical gamers (there were both DBM and ASL tournaments), eurogamers, and RPGA fanatics in the same group. People that probably would snicker at the others from behind closed doors meeting in hallways and nodding to each other when noticing the convention badge.

I love reminding people of things they'd forgotten about. I actually used to role-play with Peter Adkison (Wizards of the Coast founder) back before he started WotC (I think it was 1988 when we were most active, maybe 1987). We lost contact a good 12-13 years ago or so. Anyway, he was a featured guest at the con, and happened to be at the registration desk Sunday afternoon when I was between games. I stopped by, introduced myself by reminding him of the gaming group we had first, then giving him my name. I was pleasantly surprised that he remembered me. We had a good chat after that remembering the old days. If you really want to see the brain power and enthusiasm that went into the founding of WotC before Magic: the Gathering hit, try to find a copy of The Primal Order, a generic RPG supplement. There's brilliant stuff in there (and the three supplements) that has never been equaled in anything I've ever seen. M:tG turned Wizards into a economic force, but it started out as most do – a company by gamers for gamers. They just happened to stumble onto a gold mine.

I followed the herd and took a handful of games down to the local game shop for their annual auction. All part of the process of removing stuff I'm no longer interested in playing. I think this is going to be a severe buyer's market... You just never know, though.

At Conquest, I picked up a copy of Twilight Struggle. You just have to love a CDG with only 8 pages of rules. I was surprised to see that it's currently in the geek's top ten games (as is Command and Colors: Ancients, btw – both games were seen all over the place at the con). I didn't realize it had been rated THAT highly. That said, I've seen nothing but good reports on it, and there's actually very little combat – it's more an area/political influence game than a wargame, thus increasing its appeal. There's apparently a little concern with the difficulty in getting the US to win the first few times you play, but it seems to be a style thing as much as anything. Looking forward to giving this one a shot. Jodie might even play... (Of course, Here I Stand has started shipping, so there's definitely going to be competition for gaming time.)

As a side effect of buying Twilight Struggle, I got entered into a raffle for other GMT product – surprise, surprise, I won a copy of 3 Days of Gettysburg. I've thought about buying this one in the past as it's the only battleground I've ever personally visited. I don't expect to ever actually PLAY the thing, but I'll probably punch it out and push some of the counters around as an interactive learning experience more than anything.

Finally, Jodie and I pulled out Elasund for a learning game yesterday. It plays surprisingly well with two, and we both enjoyed it a lot. (And we definitely enjoyed it more than Candamir.) This one should get a fair amount of play.

Game Group: Long Island Boardgaming Organization

2006-02-20T22:50:00.000-08:00

Long Island Boardgaming Organization
Submitted by Chris Palermo
Edited by Dave Eggleston

How did the group get started?

For a period of time, I used to host several people at my house for gaming. Unfortunately, there was nothing "official" and people would routinely cancel, which was awfully frustrating. Finally, I decided to form a "real" gaming club. During a World Boardgaming Championships visit, I realized that I could create the same sense of camaraderie and competition in a local group. It just needed to be organized. Two founding members set about making a constitution, with attendance policies, membership policies, etc. From these policies, the Long Island Boardgaming Organization (LIBO) was born. It is still a work in progress, on many levels, since we are never content with simple mediocrity. We always strive for excellence. We track a lot of statistics, and award plaques at the end of each year to those players who win the various categories. The stats measure different abilities, so it is unlikely one person will sweep through all the plaques. There are restrictions to avoid someone coming to one GameDay, winning 3 out of 4 games, never showing up again, and then qualifying for the plaque.

How does your group find new members?

We recruit using BoardGameGeek, word of mouth, AccessDenied, and at some local conventions. The evolution of INDEPTH, our free magazine on our website has helped somewhat. It is interesting that the group was originally formed with friends and family, but now that we have recruited, we have recruited gamers, who have become like family.

How would you describe your group?

We are primarily male, with only 1 female remaining in the group. Ages range from mid-20s to early 40s. We meet once a month from 11am-1am for a GameDay, and twice more a month (on a Friday night from 7pm-1am, and a Wednesday night from 7pm-11pm) for other gaming. We currently have the Wednesday Nites on hiatus, since we started a splinter league for Heroscape, which meets two Thursdays a month. We meet in members’ houses. We have approximately 10 members (down from a high of 15), and, ideally, like to keep the group between 9-16 members. There are about 3-4 members that can host, and the GameDays and GameNites rotate through those hosts. While we do track a lot of statistics, which makes for competitive play (that was the philosophy going in: Make people play for something, and they’ll show up), the fact is that the social camaraderie is what makes this group feel unique. There truly is a sense of friendship amongst everyone in the group, which makes the game playing that much more enjoyable.

How do you decide which games to play?

The mission of the group, initially, was to effectively work our way through my large collection. Consequently, most of the time, the games are chosen from that collection. Recent recruits, however, have brought their own sizeable (and, in some cases, still-growing) collections. I make up the schedule for the day, determining which games will get played and when, trying also to be cognizant of recent purchases by other members. This does create some debate between those members who do purchase and collect games (who wish to play all the games they purchase) and those members who do not purchase games (who wish to play their favorites again and again). We normally set up themes for GameDays; currently, it is based on manufacturer (e.g., February is Days of Wonder and Fantasy Flight Games). By the end of this year, we should be able to set up GameDays based on themes in the game, as well as mechanisms. There is a lot of work involved to making this happen, however, since each game needs to be classified.

How do you select the start player?

At any time there are 2-4 games going on simultaneously. Certain players (based on who played the “worst” the previous month) have the ability to select a table at which to play. After those requests are made, laminated seating cards are taken randomly. Each player then heads to his or her assigned table and seat.

What do you consider your group’s signature games?

Our signature games would probably include Puerto Rico, Atlantic Storm and Advanced Civilization. There are a number of games we play quite a bit (e.g., Medici and El Grande) and a number of games we played a lot at one time (e.g., Goa and St. Petersburg). However, the first three are almost always standards each year.

What games were featured in your most memorable gaming sessions?

Our most memorable session was probably a session of I’m the Boss, which was immortalized for all time by Michael Albergo in his writeup in the pages of INDEPTH.

What games were featured in your most unfortunate gaming sessions?

We have taken chances on some games that simply did not work (e.g., Mutual Mania). But, across the board, the games that fail miserably are the games with no real end (e.g., Munchkin, Killer Bunnies and the Quest for the Magic Carrot, Inkognito); either it is too easy to whack the leader, or everyone ”ends” at the same time.

What games have created the biggest love/hate division among members of your group?

With all groups, there is a distinction made between games with great mechanics and games with great aesthetics. We are fortunate to have representation on both sides for this debate. There aren’t many games that have their ratings tremendously out of whack (where one faction might rate the game a ‘2’ and another faction might rate the game a ‘5’); Advanced Civilization probably fits best, due to the lengthy time needed to play. Twilight Imperium caused the most controversy (with some pretty distinctive ratings); the full collective commentary spanned 16-18 pages altogether.

What do you do about food and music at your gaming sessions?

For food, we normally have the host provide lunch, which is paid for by all the members in attendance. For dinner, it is up to the host. Some hosts also provide dinner (adjusting the day’s food ‘fee’ accordingly), while other hosts order out, with each person paying for his or her own meal. There is no music at the gaming session.

A closing note?

While our approach and philosophy probably differs greatly from other groups, it is important to remember our origins, initially consisting of friends and family exclusively . New recruits are brought gently into the group; we delay making decisions on suitability until we are confident in the new recruit, since the camaraderie is so important to maintain. In fact, the group has become so family-like we regularly schedule "Family Days", which have included trips to the Bronx Zoo, Coney Island Aquarium and New York City. We also have a Mini-Golf tournament and two Ping Pong tournaments each year, as well as other assorted get-togethers as a group, including spouses and children. We also take session reports and reviews seriously; part of putting out a magazine, besides being used as a recruiting tool, is the ability to influence other gamers. Several gamers have written me to tell me that, based on a review or report they read in INDEPTH, they would now be purchasing that game. Those truly are success stories.

Game Group is a monthly series, providing unique profiles of established gaming groups. It was inspired by the “book group” feature in the (most excellent) bookmarks magazine. We want to hear from you about your gaming group! If you would like to participate, send an inquiry to ripcitygamer@comcast.net.

Game Group index:

01/2006: Jerusalem Strategy Gaming Club
02/2006: Long Island Boardgaming Organization

Hunting for a Clue (or Maybe a Can't Stop)

2006-02-18T12:17:00.000-08:00

I'm also on the Auction Hunt this weekend, which some of our folks already mentioned. Rainy Day Games will sponsor an auction on February 25 at 3 pm. So if you're in the area, please plan to come on out ready to spend some cash for good games.

Evidently a couple of our guys have already put 100+ games into the piles. Which is great in terms of more games available to the public, possibly not as good for the price per game figures. So I've been trying to work out a reasonable goal for what I want to do in relation to the auction. Here are my starting facts:

1. I have way too many games, like maybe 500 I don't "need" for playing anytime soon.
2. Many of the games of that 500 wouldn't be worth $5.00 apiece.
3. Many of the games are at our storage locker, some unknown as to which box they're in.
4. I collected a lot of duplicates for an eventual donation to a library or a school, so I probably wouldn't want to donate those, or if so, maybe just one nice copy.
5. The deal is you get store credit at Rainy Day Games, a nice retail store that has sold a lot of Havoc for us.
6. Rainy Day is nearly an hour drive for me, so I don't shop there too often.
7. I don't have a clue what other games will be in the auction - duplicates may lower prices.
8. In past years many Euros have sold for $10-$15.
9. In the past, card games have only brought a few dollars.
10. The more games for sale, the less interest per game unless the game is outstanding.

And some assumptions behind my factoids: If a game won't bring $5.00, it may not be worth the hassle of finding it, checking for completeness, and toting it in. I'd like to participate in the sale, and having some credit at Rainy Day would be cool, if only to support the store. A lot on unusual games I have may not be well enough known to bring on bidders. And games that would sell well on Ebay or Boardgamegeek should probably sell there instead.

I'd like to get a few games to the auction that are either great standards or that people could look for having played them already. Or just things that our family likes so we tend to get extra copies of in trades or when we see them for sale. Here's my starting list:

1. Can't Stop - great basic Sid Sackson. Often copied, hardly improved on. This is the US Parker Brothers version.

2. Liar's Dice - I might sell Perudo or its ilk instead since Liar's Dice (Milton Bradley?) is by far my favorite version of the game.

3. Black Box - might be tough to find one with the original cheap paper "shell" intact. It never had a real box since the games itself is a hard plastic container. Great solo game, even though meant for two players.

4. Ghosts - another classic 2 player, simple, made more popular by being on BreeSpielWelt I think.

5. Heroscape - a big set with plenty of plastic miniatures and furniture, might not be worth the effort to find a beautiful copy if it's only going to bring in $10 or something.

Maybe I'll spot some different choices once I start cleaning the basement and office, where games tend to pile up before they get hoisted off to storage, usually to clear some floor space at home. My idea for now is to try to generate $60-$100 at Rainy Day as a store credit.

Hope to see you at the auction - I'm sure I'll bring some of your treasures home as well!

Burndown Update, The Auction Game

2006-02-17T20:45:00.000-08:00

Time for an update on my burndown chart for unplayed games. I think I found a better way to graph this by using a technique often adopted by Scrum teams to indicate overall scope – capture the total amount of games knocked off in addition to the split between played and unplayed games. Looking at the graph below, if you look at the top line you’ll see that there are a total of about 83 games for me to knock off this year, and as of tonight I’ve played seven of them.

At this trajectory, it seems unlikely I’ll get even close to finishing by the end of the year. I’m picking off some of the easier ones, such as Rolit, Yahtzee Deluxe Poker, and Ido, but I’ve got some much longer games that will be more difficult to get out and play still in the queue. Time to consider reducing scope.

As Doug mentioned, Rainy Day Games will be hosting an auction on February 25 at 3pm. I’m getting more aggressive about auctioning some games unlikely to be played again (though nowhere near as aggressive as Dave and Doug). My goal is to make enough to purchase a copy of Descent. I’ll have some decent titles up for auction, including Doom, Formula De Mini, and Quicksand. The challenge, of course, will be to not pick up a bunch of games at the auction that will persist on my unplayed list this year. That reminds me… I need to grab Outdoor Survival for the auction too. I was duly warned about even trying that one.

Thursday Already?

2006-02-16T16:09:00.000-08:00

I was out this afternoon running errands, and thought to myself, "Self, you forgot to do your blog entry this morning!" Which was not entirely true, I'd forgotten to do my blog entry for yesterday morning. Ack. Time flies.

Today, I did a Good Thing. As I've written a few times before, I'm trying to cull down my game collection. I got far enough to have actually separated out a bunch of games, created a new storage area separated from anywhere my wife might happen to be in the house, and even sold a few to members of my group. I also did a little looking on eBay to see what sort of prices I might get for some of the more desireable games.

Today, I took all of the non-eBay games out to a local store, Rainy Day Games, to be placed in an auction taking place at the end of the month. All told, I brought in almost 100 games. A grand total of four had either missing or damaged parts, all of which came with the original game. A few games I'd had for a long time (more than 10 years) had some box damage. Otherwise, these were all in great shape, some never played.

While I was writing down the manifest (and trying to determine minimum bid, which I determined by either setting it at $5 if it seemed like a worthwhile game), I was surprised at the number of people coming into the store who came all the way into the back and marvelled at the collection. At least four people expressed interest in Goldland alone, and several were doing that knowing nod that means "Cool..." A contributing factor was the number of big box games that I'd brought in, very few of my card games got culled as they take up such a small amount of space. Sadly, I forgot to take Chez Geek with me...

I don't know that all of my games will get bought, although with the junk having minimum bids of $1, I figure that just about everything will find a home. If everything was able to pull in an average of $5 each, that would be $500 in store credit. That's a lot of credit, enough for almost 10 FFG games. Since I don't buy a lot from this store, that means that a lot of things I was intending to purchase online will become retail price purchases.

Mostly, I'll be happy that my games will get new life. There is something sad about a game that isn't played and loved, even if it is a loser like San Gimignano. (Note if you're attending the auction: it's a great game! Not.) While some games I own have considerably more sentimental value than gaming value, I'm happier if the game is hitting the table on occasion. Even if it's someone else's table. For that reason, I kept the minimum bids very low to encourage buyers.

I'm not sure I'll make the auction, as I'm coming home from Denver late on Friday, then have a four hour choir rehearsal the next morning, plus I'm anticipating enough disposable income generated from the auction that I'll buy yet more stuff. And so the cycle comes around yet again. Bing, purge, bing, purge.

Hey, I could have worse hobbies.

Oh, I do have worse hobbies. Whoops.

Again, my apologies for the late posting. I am almost certainly not going to be posting next week because of travel, so I'm now off the hook for that week...

Head stuck in a paint pot

2006-02-14T13:23:00.000-08:00

Next weekend is a new gaming convention in the Northwest. Conquest NW. These guys have apparently been running shows in San Francisco and Los Angeles for a while, but 2006 is their Seattle debut. As it turned out to be the same weekend as our annual West Coast DBM 15mm Championship (Harbor Storm) our organizer hooked up with them to become a featured event at the show.

So, naturally, that means I have painting to do. I don't think I've EVER gone to a tournament without having to do some painting. Constantly tweaking things... Of course, the stories aren't any good if you're not doing the painting up to the last minute. This time, however, I think I've got it done early. Only 22 figures plus 9 pack horses to paint this time, and they're nearly all done. As a result, my head's been in a paint pot during my free time the last week or so. Hasn't been much time for boardgames since the big shindig at Mike's on Super Bowl Sunday.

Not that that's stopped me from acquiring any... Right after I start talking about culling the herd, there just seems to be an influx of new stuff. Games that have arrived at the house since the beginning of the year (or will be here shortly):

*Age of Steam Expansion #4
Bus
*Command & Colors: Ancients
*Defiant Russia
*Die Magier von Pangea
Drive (Crazy Chicken)
El Caballero
*Elasund
*Euphrates & Tigris Card Game
Fearsome Floors
*Here I Stand (shipping next week.)
Pizza Box Football
*Ra
Railroad Tycoon
*Red Vengenace
Roma
*Saboteur
*SeaSim
Settlers of Catan 3d
*Sixteen Thirty Something
*St. Petersburg: The Banquet
*Subulata
*Traumfabrik
*Wildlife Adventure
*Zing! (Die Sieben Siegel)
ZooSim

Needless to say, the “owned but unplayed” list just grew a bit. I've never played any of the ones with asterisks. Now that Jodie's worked through most of her morning sickness, and I don't have any pressing painting/work deadlines, maybe we can chop down through this list a bit. Jodie was reading the rules to Elasund a couple days ago, and it looks like a good one.

And it's definitely time to sell a few things... Need to balance the gaming budget a bit.

Given the recent chatter in the comments to Chris' blog entry last month, I've started looking closer at 18xx games. In particular the “entry-level” one-state games 18GA, 18AL, and the upcoming 18FL. These are designed for a small number of players, and around 3 hours playtime, max. THAT sounds doable. Long enough to give you a real feel for how the genre works, but not so long that you're spending the last four or five hours feebly managing a bad position. (Which is exactly where I expect to end up on my first few plays.) After a play or two on those, I think I'll be ready for the 1860 and 1856 I already own.

This all ties in to my unbreakable draw towards bigger, heavy (not necessarily war-)games. I'm just sorry I had to miss our group's recent Die Macher day. Next time, I'm there.

February Potpourri

2006-02-13T01:49:00.000-08:00

A lot of topics this month, but they are all linked to line items from my New Year’s resolutions: selling games; working on prototypes; and running events at Game Storm.

This past weekend, I packed up the first of two suitcases with games to sell at the Rainy Day Games auction later this month. It appears I have already rid myself of most of the wheat last year, as what I have left is largely chaff. I am certainly not expecting to haul in as much as I did last year, where I averaged ~$17 a game. Here is what is in the first batch:

Now that I have stopped buying every single Kosmos 2-player game that has been released, I can allow myself to dispose of the ones that I own: Balloon Cup; Caesar & Cleopatra; Elchfest; Lord of the Rings: the Duel.
A bundle of Wizard Kings products: original set, four expansion maps, and two expansion armies. I understand that different rule sets and scenarios have been released that “fix” the game, but it all seems like too much work for what is a rather constrained system. I will stick with CCGs and Titan for fantasy-themed warfare.
Various obscure Euros from a few years ago that flopped in their first playings: Evergreen; Die Weinhandler (the Piatnik release, not the recent card game); Machu Picchu; X.Net. I figure that there must be at least a couple of completists in the area who would pick these up for a few bucks.
A couple of games that do not require snide comments to justify dumping: Family Business; Africa 1880.
A Cheapass Hip Pocket bundle: Agora, Nexus, Cube Farm, Steam Tunnel. These games cover the full range of mediocrity.
Time’s Up: Got it off of a prize table at a con. I play this enough at cons using other folks’ copies.
Industria: In our first game, I did absolutely nothing for a long stretch of the game, and still placed second. A pretty game, but it failed to engage me.
Two Avalanche Press games using roughly the same system: Granada and Tears of the Dragon. The former was decent enough in its trial run, but I am highly selective of which wargames to add to my short rotation; the latter added a fantasy setting and spell subsystem to it, but it appears to be an absolute mess – and I rarely use that term with games.

My second load will be made up of my Panzer Grenadier Bundle (5 games), my Down in Flames bundle (also 5 games), and two games of opened and sorted – yet largely unpunched – Pirates of the Spanish Main cards.

There were a lot of games that I held onto for many years just because I had the storage space. Now that the closet is almost full, I find it hard to let go of many of them because they might be fun to play with my daughter Ruoda several years from now. Never mind that there are plenty of other games I own to play with her that I do enjoy, and that the number of such games far outweighs what I had as a kid both in terms of quality and quantity; I expect no more rationality in my decisions to sell games as there was in buying them. With that in mind:

TOP TEN CRAPPY GAMES I AM HOLDING ONTO FOR RUODA’S SAKE.

Lord of the Rings (with Friends & Foes expansion) – She might turn into one of those kids who cannot handle competition, so I better keep a cooperative game around just in case. However, with me as her dad, she be more likely to be reading Pratchett than Tolkien.
The Bucket King – At least until I find a better game with cute barnyard animals
Fossil – How much more boring is actual paleontology than playing this game? Because I would like her to at least learn that much from the experience.
Tally Ho / Gone Fishing – Every little girl needs to be exposed to hunting and fishing, and I would rather it be with me than, say, Dick Cheney. Beer not included.
Big City – I can sell it as re-experiencing the nightmare of Portland-area urban planning.
Hare & Tortoise – I am sure that, with my math education background, I can find better ways to get her to do arithmetic willingly. But I’ll keep this around as a fallback plan.
Runebound (1st ed.) – Just in case she is into this sort of thing. I hope not, else she might resent me for not picking up 2nd edition and all of its expansions.
Africa / Goldland - No matter how dry/dull you make the rest of the game, exploration games are still fun for kids of all ages, especially when they feature Goldsieber’s luscious production.
Roborally (with expansions) – The coolness/cuteness factor is way too high for me to part with this.
“Crayon Rails” series / “Ticket to Ride” series / “Trans*” series / “10 Days in” series – Is it not enough that we have two world maps hanging up in her playroom? Geography is overrated…

A month ago when reading the D&D Forgotten Realms campaign sourcebook, I was looking at the spell “Gemblast” when an idea came to me for a game. I came up with a rev 0 ruleset within 24 hours, and, soon after, had a rev 1 made and ready for playtesting. I have never completed a multi-player design before, so that was encouraging. I have no ambition to be published, and I do not think I am capable of producing anything original or tight enough to be worth marketing, as I fall too hard for my themes. However, some of the playtest feedback was positive, although it clearly is targeting a narrow niche. So, I thought I would make this available free for PDF download, releasing it via this blog in the next couple of months after I do a bit more playtesting. Perhaps I can fulfill my Game Storm resolution by holding a playtest session...

My main concern of self-publishing is the price of Adobe Acrobat. I would probably use it for this and my 2-player design (which I may also release the same way), and perhaps for archiving articles from this blog. That’s a lot of money to invest in small-time vanity projects… Does anyone ever use Word for self-publishing? Are there pros/cons other than platform support?

This past week, Kosmos/Mayfair announced the English edition of the Candamir character builder. My wife has not been willing to try many new titles with me the past few years, but now I think I have a way to get this one onto the table:

One of my stretch goals this year was to do something memorable at Game Storm. With the Candamir editor, I now have an idea. The hotel has wireless, so if I bring a laptop, digital camera, and a color printer, then I can make custom cards for participants. They can play the game as themselves and have a (worthless) souvenir to take home with them afterwards. If the logistics prove to be prohibitive, perhaps instead I will go with Celebrity Death Match Candamir: six contestants, two 3-player semi-finals; top 3 finishers battle it out in the finals. Here are the contenders, all legal with a value of exactly 40 points each: