That New Game Smell

My brother got me Thai food and a gift certificate to my local game shop as a birthday present. Huzzah!

I picked up the second edition of Ricochet Robots, yet another of those clever German board games that play so well. It's almost a competive puzzle instead of a board game. I use the word puzzle on purpose- any number of players can play, searching for a solution.

Players sort of control four colored robots in a maze-like area, trying to reach randomly drawn destinations. Most of the game takes place in the head- everyone must do the mental gymnastics needed to arrive at a solution without touching the board. Also, the robots move like rooks without brakes- the skill comes from imagining the positions of several robots needed to bounce off each other to get the target robot to its goal. The competive aspect enters once players start bidding for who can move the robots with the fewest number of moves. Sometimes you can get outbid by another player with a more efficient solution.

The second edition adds colored diagonal walls in certain locations (like-colored robots pass through while differently-colored robots ricochet off) and a black robot for additional obstacles.

I've seen field data that suggests this game has a male gender bias- be advised. Something to test down the line, perhaps. Also a bias for players of very twitchy console games.

With the rest of my gift certificate, I grabbed a modest supply of poker chips in order to have fewer obstacles to a playtest of 1984 Prime.

No lottery for you!

I bought a lottery ticket yesterday.

I don't often play the lottery, usually only buying a ticket on my birthday and when the jackpot gets stupid large- say, over $100 million. All told, this puts the price of my incredibly out-of-control gambling addiction at something less than three or four tickets per year. A friend of mine says that he pays his dollar a week for the right to daydream. I don't need to pay to daydream, but like most of us, I have a few big-ticket dreams on how I would change the world given a large chunk of cash.

If I do ever win a lottery, thanks to the Rotten Library (Note that the link is work-safe; as to the rest of the site... not so much), I know how to protect my anonymity- or at least how to start. As the man says, "Fifteen million dollars is not money. It's a motive with a universal adapter on it."

Oh, well. I'll have to put off my travel and charity founding and funding of a few major motion pictures. Maybe next year.

Greylight word count: 2529

Today is my birthday

Thanks, mom!

Wet Paint

There's an old saying: Show a man a sign that says "Wet Paint" and he has to touch it. Tell him there's a million trillion billion stars in the universe and he'll believe you.

Today, they painted the stairway banisters to match the relatively new paint job of the rest of the complex. The smell pervaded the complex to the point that it even spread into the apartment. Not that I spent the day breathing paint fumes, mind you, but to the point that I noticed it throughout the day. One of the banisters had bright yellow caution tape strung up to prevent people from walking on the paint job. Naturally, I had to touch the paint to see if it was still wet. Like so many times before, no dice.

Walking back up our own staircase, I idly ran my hand along the banister as I ascended. Of course there was no "Wet Paint" sign or caution tape or strobe lights on the stairs nearest out apartment, and of course the paint was still wet.

luckily, I only got a small few touches of paint instead of a handful.

Greylight word count: 2232
Birthday countdown: 1! (presents, e-cards, gift certificates, cash, donations in my name, leave comments even!)

Recent boardgaming

Between open games night at Great Hall Games and Dan, Dan, the Monkey Man hosting a New Game Show Off day, I've gotten a lot a boardgaming in these pas few days. Here's the skinny.


Dragon Delta

I've already talked about this in a previous post, but I'll give a session recap. Recaps, really- we played this one three times! First with five, then twice more with (two different) sets of six players. I won the first game, I don't remember who won the second (anyone?), and Marc won the third. I really liked playing this with six- took about an hour or so, I'd say. I didn't really like a five-way gang up "let's prevent Mischa from winning twice as he so rightly deserves" near the endgame, but six different people voting Dragon Delta cool and fun makes it all worth the while. I'm such a team player.

Car Wars: the Card Game

I won this from a Steve Jackson MIB at Millennium Con 8 over Halloween. I hadn't gotten the chance to play it, so I got to enjoy That New Game Smell. As a simplification of the original early eighties version, this does the job. We played in maybe 15-20 minutes, with the first kill (sorry, David) in less than fifteen minutes. It works as filler, but really not much else. The color certainly helps the theme, but the simplification (and the fact that you don't build cars whatsoever- the stock cars are mechanically identical) completely removes the immersion and attachment of the original. I'm not saying I want to whip out the original and do some hard core physics sim to throw cars around, but having a new Car Wars video game would rock like a hurricane. Turn-based? Real-time? Both?

At any rate, that's all we played at Great Hall. Much geeking and socializing abounded, of course. David had some sort of surgery sim for his Nintendo DS, but I didn't get a chance to play it. I suppose that I'll have to fire up a DOS emulator and play Life and Death. Hooray for four-color CGA!


And at today's New Game game day:

Apples to Apples

I didn't play this, but rather came in at the end of a four-player game. Two of the players had never played before, one of whom is the "gaming widow," so to speak. I still stand by my recommendation that Apples to Apples works great as a party game, as a non-gamer game, or as a light intro game.

Modern Art

Next, we played Reiner Knizia's Modern Art, possibly one of the purest auction games out there. This is a damn good game that smacks of Knizia's mathematics background. I am pretty terrible at this game, generally coming in second-to-last, and I think it speaks to its excellence that I still have fun auctioning off modern art and selling the most popular.

In a nutshell, three to five players represent auction houses with works from five artists with differing rarities. Each card in the deck features a piece from one of the five artists and specifies one of five different kind of auctions (Open, Sealed, Once Around, Fixed, and Double). Each turn, a player chooses one card and auctions it. Cleverly, players pay each other instead of the bank, which ensures both a dynamic interaction between players and an internal decision struggle: I want this, but do I want to really give my money to so-and-so in the lead? At the end of each auction season, the works are then valued based on their popularity in this season as well as the previous seasons. You then sell your art, including the art worth nothing. Did I mention that you keep your reserve funds secret from the other players?

Very tasty stuff here. If this even remotely sounds up your alley, get it. Mayfair recently put out a still widely available English version, so you've got no excuse.

Tikal

Tikal is a very clever German game with a deep jungle exploration theme. Each turn, players reveal an additional tile of the jungle and spend ten action points to move their explorers, unearth temples, dig for artifacts, and generally get in each other's way. A little randomness exists in the layout of the jungle hexes, but largely things happen due to the strategy of the players. The game overall has nice art and its components are made of good sturdy high-quality materials. It also very elegantly explains possible actions in a language-free reference card. I think I'd need to play this a second (or third!) time to fully grok it.

Ticket to Ride

I've already posted my thoughts on this game. Nothing new, as I played Tikal while the other three played Ticket to Ride.

Tantrix

The last game I played before cutting out for the evening was Tantrix. This is an older tile-laying game from New Zealand, still in print after nearly twenty years. Each unique hexagonal Bakelite tile has three of four colored lines drawn across it; players compete to make either the longest single line (1 point per segment) or the longest closed loop (2 points per segment). Abstract strategy games appeal to me precisely because of the abstraction, as opposed to (say) miniature wargaming. In the same breath, a little bit of color laid on top of abstract strategy goes a long way, as in chess. This simple game of colored lines has a lot going for it. The Wikipedia article has a great deal of information on the game.

Greylight word count: 2126
Birthday countdown: 3!

Everything old is K-RAD again

First the secret masters decided that we would find cool sixties-era revolution, hippies, tie-die, and so forth.

In the last few years, we've seen the powers that be start to move their reinventing timeline forward, as the seventies started to hit contemporary movies and television, clothing brands, and design trends.

Now even though I've seen the eighties start to pop up at Hot Topic, with kids (and by kids I mean the under-twenty set, mostly) snapping up rediscovered eighties pop culture such as Saturday morning cartoons they've never seen, Nintendo games they've never played, and even as a valid period piece setting for new movies, all this time I've had blinders on, not truly realizing the desperation by those needing to reenvision brands. Maybe you thought the writing was on the wall with new Bewitched movie, but no.

I just read (Thanks for the intel, Robin!) that Disney (You know 'em, you love 'em!) has plans to repackage/redo/revive/remake/remarket classic Devo music with a new band, "Dev2.0" [sic], for the pre-teen crowd. You know, for kids. Disney. Devo.

I have seen the signs- well, I've seen the music video. (Warning: WMV.) Go ahead and look at it- you know you want to, and I'll wait here.

Does it not seem ironic (and I mean ironic, not witty or cool or amusing or any of the dozens of other connotations the word has acquired) that the Disney Corporation chooses to reuse a geeky, punky, irreverent band for this? I mean, it's Devo. Oh, to be a fly on the wall for that meeting.

"Sir, we want to make more money."
"Capital idea, Crenshaw. How?"
"Well, Marketing has this idea to find some brand or franchise — we're thinking a rock group band this time — that nobody else has yet, buy it, then release it as new."
"Hmmm. Not very imaginative."
"But wait, sir- I haven't told you the clever bit."
"Tell me the clever bit."
"We use kids."
"We already do that, Crenshaw."
"Yes, but in this case, we'll use kids as the performers."
"Brilliant!"

I mean, what will we see next? "Never mind the Mickey, here's the Mouse Pistols?

Greylight word count: 2052
Birthday countdown: 4!

Work shall set you free

Woohoo, I got a job!

More of a gig, really. The important detail is that I've got a 6-9 month contract with Dell via Spherion (a staffing agency) to do call center work. I go to (paid!) training next Monday, and there you go.

In New Hire Orientation today, I almost could've played buzzword bingo with the nice HR person- headcount, headcount, headcount. But she is totally awesome and very on the level, so it's all good.

In order to get this job, I had to pass a background check and take a drug test. It wasn't a blood or hair test, either- use your imagination, or not. I've never had to pass a drug test before, and those of you know me as the teetotaler will no doubt get a kick out of the notion. All in all, the whole experience was pretty surreal. And yes, I passed with flying colors, and no, I didn't have to study.

This sort of thing really gets my libertarian hackles up. It's right there with the common regulations surrounding alcohol. I grew up in New Orleans, with its notoriously loose notions about who can drink when and where. I've never had a full drink in my life, and I've tasted an alcoholic drink fewer than a dozen times. Regardless, I still have culture shock when I hear that places close at 2AM, or you can't buy something on a Sunday, or you must store an item in the trunk as opposed to in the chassis of your car. (My dislike of legal shackles shows in my game design. As a player, I want no limits on what I can do.)

There's evidently some sort of sporting game event going on that Austinites care about, so Go Local Sports Team and/or College! (This is a humorously contemptuous statement. Deal.)

News^4

I got a job offer via a gaming contact, and my mom admitted that gaming had some merit. Double w00t! More details tomorrow.

Today marked the second session of my Dogs game for the so-called Renegade Roleplayers of Austin. This session definitely rocked in a good way, as we all became more familiar with the rules, each other, and I got over a few of my GMing issues.

I can pretty reliably do about 4-5 minutes of continual circular breathing on my new didjbox. Huzzah!

I borrowed and did not buy two separate games for research. For the curious, I nabbed both Burning Wheel and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (first edition). I leave the focus of my research as an exercise for the reader.

Greylight word count: 1847
Birthday countdown: 6!

Same old stories

We all have a story to tell. Most of us have more than one, and very often, we have amusing anecdotes that we relate to people in our social circle. Like the one about the fast food employee who couldn't make change, or the amusing misspoken word from a colleague at work, or the minor road mishap we saw while driving, or the famous person we once met in a mundane setting.

Why do we humans do this? Yes, we are social animals, but do we tell stories just want to make small talk? Perhaps we strive to make ourselves look better as compared to others, or to turn focus away from our own shortcomings. Maybe we need look no further than the inclination to laugh. Stories, they say, are universal. There's only so many plots (and the exact number remains up for debate), but endless variations on Love, Revenge, the Quest keep asses in seats and books on the shelf.

I have a semi-bad habit of forgetting who has heard a given anecdote, either retelling a story to a person or assuming they've heard it already. I try to think of it as good storytelling practice to re-tell a tale to the same audience. I also enjoy observing seeing how various turns of phrase will change over the history of an anecdote- some will stick, some will go away. I think I read a story by Stephen King that mentioned this sort of occurrence tangentially- words wearing a groove in the mind like a river over stone.

Greylight word count: 1718
Birthday countdown: 8!

Happy 2006 with my 100th post!

It's the new year. Huzzah! This also marks my 100th blog entry, and I'd like to thank all of you for helping me make this happen.

Don't forget that Winter-een-mas happens in just three short weeks, so get ready to get your game on!

Currently, I'm playing Indigo Prophecy, a very cool video game done in the style of an interactive movie. You control three (so far) main characters, and each action changes the storyline in some way as well as influencing the other characters' stories and options. Maybe adventure games are back?


Birthday countdown: 9!