Darwinia and DROD

Bryon pointed me at Darwinia; Judson pointed me at DROD.

I like both, for different reasons; Darwinia is a very immersive strategy game set in a computer-generated world released in late 2005, DROD is an old-school puzzle set in a pest-infested dungeon that's more than ten years old.

These computer games have been brought to you by the letter D.

Sort of like the Game Chef

I just heard about the Reversed Engineer Challenge. Kevin Allen, Jr. has noticed that the character sheet is often the final thing in an RPG manual. In his challenge, folks are to design a character sheet only, as the first, most primal thing about the game. A shuffling bit of randomness later, and everyone then has two weeks to design the game suggested by their assigned character sheet. (More discussion going on over at Story-Games and the Forge.) The deadline is the 28th; I should have something non-Katrina together by then.

There's more than twenty PDFs up now; many of them are very well-crafted. Some, however, make me very frightened of the final game.

Some time ago, I found an article focusing on the importance of the character sheet; it fundamentally tells the player what is important about the character in terms of the game engine. If you look down at your sheet and see that 90% of the page is devoted to weapon plusses, then you know that you shouldn't expect to have deep moral debates over the nature of good versus evil. A character sheet should inform the player what to focus on, which ties directly into what the game is about.

My occasional lunch buddy S. John Ross is a big advocate of multiple rounds of character sheet design and testing. This ties in to a similar design methodology by Ian of the Flywheel), where he takes all of the protoype bits for a boardgame and sees how they could work together, evolving the rules from the interaction.

It's all about the gamecraft, baby.

And boy, are my arms tired

Congratulations to Scott and Jen, whose new baby girl was born on the same day as the master of horror, H.P. Lovecraft!

Nice timing, Jen.

Board games, Katrina, donations

Last year, this guy raised two thousand dollars for charities after Katrina by auctioning off a baker's dozen of board games.

Yes, it's been fifty weeks. What have you done for New Orleans lately?

Gen Con Delight

Dan and Kelly returned from Gen Con ( Part 1, part 2); Dan returned with a baker's dozen of games. Tuesday, instead of regular boardgame design night, we played two of them.

First up, Shear Panic (BGG, BUY ME!). This is a high fun-factor game about sheep with terrible puns and wonderful production values. For only nine pieces (the flock of sheep), there's a lot of depth here. Well, there's also a scoring track and player boards to keep track, but that's not the meat of the game. Each of four sections of the play field score differently: get your sheep adjacent; get your sheep closest to Roger the Romantic Rose-bearing Ram; get your sheep adjacent to the black sheep; get your sheep furthest from the sheep shearer and elimination. The initial analysis paralysis from twelve different moves versus nine sheep in a three by three grid quickly whittles down as play progresses; you can only perform an action once. Scoring was very tight for the game, and I won at the very end, with Chris acting as kingmaker between myself and Ian.

That's Chris's head, by the way.

We next played Reiner Knizia's Blue Moon City (BGG, BUY ME!). ZOMGWTFBBQ, this game is gorgeous, awesome, and this year's runner-up for the Spiel des Jahres. There's a great sense of balance in the points, and the card-based building mechanic grants players plenty of freedom in their decisions. This is a strong buy recco, for what it's worth. Dan won, but I would have on my turn- so close!

Gaming Delight

I have to blame Will Ferrell's new vehicle (pardon the pun), Talledega Nights, for getting the damn song Afternoon Delight stuck in my head. The local art house/movie house/restaurant joint, the Alamo Drafthouse, runs custom clips for each movie instead of the mind-numbingly dull usual psuedo-entertisements for Coke, celebrity culture, and bad new movies.

But on to games.

Last game night at Great Hall had a few new people show up. As it happened, some of the regular rail gamers didn't show on time, so one of their number played a round of FBI (BGG, BUY ME ON BGG) as a filler/opener game. Our local crime-solving agency was staffed by myself, Bryon, the rail player Castro, and Norman and Katelyn. I taught this a little better for this, my second play of the game, but not one hundred percent. Players still had questions crop up during play, and I thought I had gone over them already; once again proving how critical it is to teach a game well. Of course, you can only teach a game you know. FBI played well, but it felt a little dry, despite the theme. It's possible that with three strangers out of five total players, there wasn't simply the group dynamic for a large fun factor. I won with about fifteen more points than second place, though all of the new players seemed to cluster together. It's a simple game for about a half-hour, and not bad as a warmer. Bryon found it a little too dry.

Next, Mutiny (BGG, BUY ME!) hit the table. By this time, the rail player had gone to play a different game, and the inimitable Brian had shown up, with his secret masters allowing him to leave the restaurant on a Friday evening.

Mutiny is a blind bidding game as the players try to bribe crewmen for control of the ship. Interestingly, you have two kinds of currencies (notice a theme, anyone?), doubloons and rum. Doubloons last from round to round, but rum goes away after you use it. The five crewmen have various powers awarded to first and second place, most notably the Lookout and his spyglass (demonstrated by Brian), which grants the power to break ties. Brian complained that he never got to really know the games that get played, since he only gets to play them once before something new hits the table. Mutiny passed Andrew Looney's tenth rule of game design, "Let's Play Again!" We wound up playing two games of Mutiny, due to popular outcry for more pirates. Things went much more smoothly the second time round, and I suspect this will come out again.

Ever-popular Villa Paletti (BGG, BUY ME!) went on over at the next table. I don't recall who won, but Signore Paletti's tower fell at least twice that night. It's such a visual draw- everyone wants to play, and it often becomes the center of attention in a crowd. I only have the University Games version, and even though I still want the super-large edition, (perhaps for the solarium, library, parlour, or study). I'd settle for the Zoch edition, which reminds us all that Villa Paletti (WP) won the Spiel des Jahres in 2002, which I have forgotten.

From a special request by Ian, I pulled out Viktory 2 (BGG, BUY ME!). He, his pal Eric, Norman, and I got in a "quick taste of Viktory". Remembering my time with too large a board, I set up a four-player game on a three-player board. We played several rounds in the last hour before the store closed. The game was fairly close overall, but both I and Norman captured some cities at the very end that would've turned the tide for the rest of the game had we continued. Overall, I felt I ran a very good demo- everyone would like to have played a full game. One of these days, I'll have to make some color play aids, though. Ian in particular expressed surprise at the relative depth of strategy available, though he termed it not a Wargame but an area control game.

At some point over the weekend, Cat and I played a quick game of Tony and Tino (BGG, BUY ME!). Like most gamer dudes, we have a soft spot for two-player games that our girls will play. The mob theme is still a plus, since Cat's been watching the Sopranos recently. Unfortunately for me, this is one of those games where a quick head at adding the various scores at a given moment give an advantage. I have to play a little more intuitively. All in all, it's pretty clever, and I finally won a game. Interestingly, the designer, Bruno Cathala, has a couple of forthcoming games I want to play: Cleopatra and the Society of Architects, and Mission: Red Planet.

That's all for now; So many games, so little time!

EDIT: Two name corrections; I extend my apologies.

Snakes on a Plane

Friday. Froth. I can't wait.

Wikipedia. Official site.


Too excited to tpye.

EDIT: You can now have the inimitable Samuel L. Jackson to give you or a friend a personalized phone call to go see the movie.

Kelly's Gabby's Tish's George's Movie Challenge

And then George told Tish who told Gabby who told Kelly who told me. In a nutshell, blog about three less-than-common movies that you like, and explain/introduce them to readers.

I don't see this as a blogosphere/we b2.0 memetastic thing; I like the five degrees of separation phenomenon. Plus I haven't talked about movies in too long. As a matter of fact, this post originated more than a year ago.

Once Netflix gets some more useful web tools for bloggers, I'll be able to share and shill more easily. Until then, I'll do what I can.

Firstly, let me suggest District B13. This is a semi-futuristic French action flick, reminiscent of the Transporter and the Fifth Element. Luc Besson writes it, so there you go. Why should you see it? It's awesome to see very gritty urban real stuntwork (a la Jackie Chan), which I found out later is called Parkour. Here, watch this chase sequence.

(Direct link to video.)

Next, Brick. This noir and stylish detective story is set in an affluent California high school. Compelling, intriguing, many-layered, beautiful to look at. I can't say enough good things about this one. Must, must, must.

Trailer, embedded:


(Direct link to video.)

Finally, Dead Alive, from Peter Jackson. You might have heard of a few movies about a ring and some short people? Back when he was doing lower-budget independent film in New Zealand, Academy Award-winning director Peter Jackson made the best zombie movie featuring a lawnmower, custard, necrophilia, and Oedipal complexes. Arguably, it's the best zombie movie ever, and certainly one of the most disgusting. If you get a chance, find the super-deluxe uncut edition (runtime 104 minutes) instead of the unrated (runtime 97 minutes). The R-rated version you can find at Big Choice National Chain is not worth it (runtime 85 minutes).

So many of our movies are still in boxes right now. I love Netflix.

Organized Mischief

My brother sent me a link to a group called Improv Everywhere. Evidently, they employ tactics similar to those used by flash mobs to achieve comedy. In this episode, they've arranged for about eighty people to show up to a Best Buy in Manhattan identically dressed in blue polos and khaki pants. The organizers captured the event on a variety of video cameras, including reactions from the employees, interactions with customers, and the arrival of the police.

The story runs a little long, but at least scroll through all of the pictures.

Local cons

Ha! While some people are going to Gen Con Indy, Austin has its very own Armadillo Con this weekend!

Of course, it's two orders of magnitude smaller and I just found out about it today and have plans most of the weekend, but James P. Hogan is a guest. I definitely have some books I could use signed.