Happy 4th Day of Christmas -- A Belated Merry Christmas

I meant to put this cartoon up on Christmas Eve, but alas I was too busy getting the house ready for Santa Claus.

Second Battleship Preview Leaves Me Wishing They Made "Battleship Galaxies" Into Film

Yesterday I tweeted that I might be the only person in America who is excited to see the upcoming "Battleship" film directed by Peter Berg. I think that Berg has a talent for both the artistic and for the popcorn, and think that his "Battleship" film looks like pure popcorn. Ridiculous popcorn.

Like, doesn't make any sense popcorn.

Not only that, but popcorn that follows the typical invasion story formula.

1. Earth encounters alien force
2. Earth gets owned by alien force -- the "Footfall" moment
3. Earth keeps fighting against hopeless odds
4. Some change/shift occurs
5. Earth wins/Aliens quit

In Footfall the aliens stop when they realize that humans are crazy and won't ever give up.  In "Independence Day,"  we create a "virus" to even the odds.  In War of the Worlds, the aliens catch a cold.  It's a common formula, tried and true.  A little staid perhaps, but I don't mind if the film is pure popcorn.  Heck, even "Skyline" followed this formula even though it ended just as the shift toward "human" victory begins.




Regardless, after seeing the alien designs in this film, and having played the "Battleship: Galaxies" board game, I personally wonder why they didn't just base the film on that game.  It would still have the transmedia marketing tie in, and it would make sense to include the aliens.

In Defense of Candy Land

In a recent episode of the Dice Tower podcast, Eric Summerer gave some surprising praise for the classic Milton Bradley board game "Candy Land." To those who are casual gamers, rather than obsessive hobby gamers, it might seem odd to call praise of "Candy Land" surprising, but it is.  While the "child's first game" is a staple in most households, it isn't a well thought of game in the hobby gaming community.  For example, the hobby gamer's go to website for opinion research is the excellent Board Game Geek website, and its members have given the game a lowly 3.2/10 rating (with an N of 1568).  This rating falls somewhere between "bad" and "not so good."

My opinion of the game has changed over the past year, and now falls pretty squarely in line with Eric Summerer's praise, and also with Rob Donohue's.  He praised the game as a great introductory game that he was playing with his son.  If memory serves, Mr. Summerer stated that "Candy Land" was the first game where his son actually started playing by the rules.  I had a similar experience with my 3 and a half year-old twin daughter's Mystery and History.  They adore this game, and have learned some valuable game playing lessons from the game.  Like Mr. Summerer's son, they play the game by the rules...well with one small exception.  Rather than the goal of the game being to "go home" as is written in the rules, Mystery and History are on a journey to have tea at Hello Kitty's house.  To add to the immersion, they have placed Lego Duplo "cat legos" on the board at both the home and peanut brittle house squares.  The home square represents Hello Kitty's house and the peanut brittle house is the domicile of Hello Kitty's apocryphal twin sister "Boxie." 

I am pretty sure that my own heightened opinion of the game is stronger than that of Mr. Summerer's.  Where I once found the game "simple" and not really worth playing, I now believe the game to be a vital addition to any gamer's collection.  But one must own the game for the right reasons.

"Candy Land" was created in 1948 by Eleanor Abbott.  Eleanor was a retired San Diego school teacher who suffered from Polio, and she created the game as a fantasy world into which children suffering from the disease could escape.  The game was first played by children in a polio ward in a San Diego hospital and was published in 1949 to great success.

The game is quite simple.  Players draw cards which have and illustration of either a colored square (or two) or a board location. The player then places their game piece on the next square of the color drawn, or the location in the illustration.  The first player to follow the track all the way to the "home" square wins.  The cards are only shuffled once, unless the entire deck has been gone through and then you shuffle again.  There is no strategy to playing the game efficiently, and the players make no tactical decisions.

It is a game of pure chance.

I believe that this one of the primary causes for the low rating the game receives on Board Game Geek.  To elaborate, I believe the following to be the reasons the game is so disdained:

1. The game is purely random with player decisions having no influence on play.
2. Due to the single shuffle, the game's outcome is effectively decided before the first piece is moved.

There seems to be a preference on Board Game Geek on games where players have control and where the role of luck is minimized, but this is a view that I personally don't share.  I love games of skill, but most games of skill are also solvable games akin to Nim.  An eventual "best strategy" can become known and that means that the game is only fun/challenging insofar as the people playing the game have incomplete knowledge.  Tic Tac Toe is only fun when both of the players lack mastery.  This is never true of a game that incorporates chance.  Chance allows for variation in play, and allows weaker players to beat stronger players.  Reiner Knizia, in his book Dice Games Properly Explained, describes games of luck in the following way, "Even though you have no tactical influence, these games provide great entertainment.  It is like watching a good movie.  You cannot change the course of the action, but you join in the excitement."

I agree.

A good game of "Candy Land" is very much like watching a good movie, especially if you are playing with people of the recommended age group of 3 to 6 years old.  Watching Mystery and History act out their journey is a great part of the fun of the game play.

But the benefits of "Candy Land" are more than just the entertainment of play, which does in all honesty have limits.  The highest benefits of playing the game are as follows:

1. Teaches turn taking
2. Teaches following the rules
3. The lack of tactical contribution minimizes "bad losing/gloating by winners"
4. Teaches color matching
5. Engages the imagination in storytelling
6. Introduces all the basics of future board game play in a conflict free environment

That's a  lot of benefits.  One could add "can be used as the basis for a discussion of Markov chains and even a full discussion of statistics" if one were so inclined, but I don't think my 3 and a half year-old daughters would be up for such a discussion.

I think that the benefits of "Candy Land" far outweigh the first criticism of the game, that of "pure" randomness.  Opposition to chance in games is more a personal taste issue than any transcendent rule of game design.  That said, I do think that the second criticism -- that the game is decided before play actually begins -- has a good deal of merit.  Therefore, I'd like to offer the two following variant rules for "Candy Land."

Bag Draw
In this version of "Candy Land," all of the cards are placed into a bag, or hat, and the players draw a random card from the bag on their turn. This makes the game more purely random, and eliminates the pre-determination factor of the game.
If players wanted to eliminate completely the influence of prior draws from future play, cards can be immediately put back into the bag after it has been used for movement determination.

1 to 4 and Left or Right

In this variant, players shuffle the cards as normal at the beginning of the game thus setting the order of cards for the remainder of the game.  The first player draws as normal and is considered Player 1 for the remainder of the game.  The other players in counter-clockwise rotation are players 2 through 4. 

 After the first player's draw, all future draws are decided through the roll of a six-sided die.  On a result of 1 to 4, the player of that number draws the next card.  On a result of 5, the player to the left of the current player draws a card.  On a result of 6, the player to the right of the current player draws a card. 

Neither of these optional rules eliminates the role of chance in play, but both add a level of mystery and change the Markov dynamics. of play.

I have found that this game is perfect for its intended audience, and believe it a vital part of any gamer's collection.  It can also be used as a point of departure for design and the creation of house rules.

The "Boxie" character should not be confused with Hello Kitty's real twin sister Mimi, and is a creation of my daughter Mystery.

Walsh, Tim (2004). Timeless Toys.

A Victory Point Games Christmas

Victory Point Games is an independent small press gaming company located in Southern California that is both a game company and a classroom.  Not only do they want to produce fun to play games, but it is their mission to turn game players into game designers.  They are a friendly and talented crew.

For the past few years, VPG has released playable game after playable game.  What the games have sometimes lacked in quality of components, they have more than made up for in quality of play.  Recently, VPG has made two corporate decisions that will bring the physical/visual quality of their products in line with the play quality.  First, they have ordered a die-press in order to produce high quality die-press counters for their games.  They have been hand pressing and cutting the individual games in the past.  Second, VPG has slated a series of digital adaptations of their games.

VPG has just released their first digital game, an adaptation of Chris Taylor's "Loot and Scoot" fantasy game.  The digital version of the game does a good job of capturing the simple charm of the printed version of the game.  It also features significant graphic improvement over the tabletop game.  You can compare the digital version's graphic presentation to that of the original by looking at the images below.  The first two images come from the new digital edition, while the second two images come from the physical version of the game. 

 

I am quite fond of the physical game, and there is no replacing a good face to face board game experience, but the digital game is both cheaper and slicker than its physical counterpart.  The new digital game -- available for both iPhone and Android devices -- comes in at an inexpensive $2.99 where the physical copy has a $17.95 price point if purchased direct.  The digital game is competitively priced, where the physical game reflects the costs associated with limited print runs, both are worth the price.  Get yourself a copy of the digital game, and purchase a copy of the physical game for a friend.

In addition to "Loot and Scoot," VPG has a large catalog of fun games that make perfect Christmas presents.  My top ten list (in no particular order) are the following:

1. Hero of Weehawken: The Aaron Burr Conspiracy
2. Gettysburg: The Wheatfield
3. Forlorn Hope
4. Nemo's War
5. Empires in America
6. Zulu's on the Ramparts
7. Waterloo 20
8. Final Frontier
9. Ancient Battles Deluxe
10. The Barbarossa Campaign

I've Got to Get Jody to Do Another Fantasy Toon Soon

Cinerati Netflix Recommendation: "The Last Detective"

Picture, if you will, the typical American police procedural.  If you have the same picture in your mind that I do, then you are picturing a team of detectives rushing to solve a crime.  They are rushing to fight against the "First 48" hours after which the solution of a murder/crime becomes more difficult.  They receive their forensic data at lightning speed, have a coroner on call, and the episodes often contain exciting chases and flashy gunfights. 

Sometimes, just sometimes, we get to see the actual procedures of the investigator -- if we happen to be watching a classic episode of "Law & Order."  Even then, the show is episodic and mystery driven.  Certainly, in the best procedural dramas like "Justified," the main detective evolves as the season progresses and his life is an on going sub-plot that ties episodes together.  But it is rare that the detective's story move beyond sub-plot to become the driving force in the show, and it is the mysteries themselves that dominate.  The best procedural dramas have strong sub-plots that become long standing arcs where the characters evolve over time and become real to the viewers.  In the worst procedural dramas, some of which are among my guilty pleasures, the detectives never become more than ciphers who rampage through mystery after mystery.  Yes...rampage through mystery after mystery, their gunfire solving crimes as often as the justice system.

The ITV drama "The Last Detective" is the best sort of police procedural.  It's mysteries take their time in resolving themselves, and the detective exploring them is a delight to watch.  He is calm, understated, and intelligent.  Detective Constable "Dangerous" Davies, played by Peter Davison, is anything but dangerous and is initially disliked by his fellow detectives for his low key personality.  In the first episode, he increases their dislike of him when he relentlessly pursues a mystery investigation to its unfortunate end.   "Dangerous" is given the title "the last detective" because of this investigation.  It is his supervisor's way of telling him that when a crime comes to the department, Dangerous will be the last detective called to investigate it.  That is unless the crime is so lame/irritating that no one else will do it.

The manner in which the pilot episode allows the investigation to reveal the life and personality of the murder victim is a marvel to watch.   As the investigation unfolds the viewer comes to care for the victim, a rare phenomenon in procedural dramas.  The third episode has that rarest of rarest occurrences, an unsolved crime, but that unsolved crime leads to an interesting narrative of obsession and the risks that detectives constantly take.

I have always had a soft spot for Peter Davison as an actor.  He was the first "Doctor" I watched on television and the "Fifth Doctor" is still my favorite.  Davison brings all of his charm and charisma to this show.  If you've got the time, give it a try.

Is a "True" Dungeon Master a "Fire in Which Players are Consumed?"

Wednesday's Penny Arcade comic completed their "Conflux" storyline in which Tycho convinces Gabe to run a Pathfinder game for a group of 4th Edition D&D players. A theme of the storyline has presented a "Pathfinder is hardcore like older editions of D&D" narrative, one that ends with Gabe now knowing the horrors of edition wars and why they happen. We as players have preferences. We like what we are used to, and changes are sometimes hard to adapt to.

I have always found it interesting that most players I know are willing -- if not even tremendously eager -- to try new game systems, but will react in horror when their favorite role playing game is released in a new edition. With the exception of Call of Cthulhu, it seems that if a game has a new edition it has a schism within its player base. It has happened several times for D&D. It happened with Traveller, Hero System, Vampire/World of Darkness...and on and on.

In the case of D&D, some of those who disparage the newest edition of the game often wax nostalgic for an era in which the players and the DM were almost akin to foes. For these players, the past was an era where players died cruelly at the whims of a harsh Dungeon Master. It was the challenge of succeeding in spite of such DMs, or failing spectacularly because of them, that was what made the Old School Games so great. You can find such nostalgic tales throughout the OSR sphere. You can also find tales of how great it was when the game assumed that the players would backstab each other and betray each other at any given moment. It is this point of view that is expressed by Tycho in the Conflux storyline. To quote Tycho in the storyline's finale, "A True Dungeon Master is a Fire in Which Players are Consumed!"

This was certainly the attitude the first person who I ever had as a DM had. He didn't hesitate to transform my Wizard into an Axe-beak -- a bizarre combination of Ostrich and mythic beast. I felt humiliated. The character wasn't my own, my friend Sean had rolled the character up. He had named the character Gandalf, I had high hopes for the young mage. In all honesty, after this first gaming experience -- which I have blogged about before -- it is really a miracle that I play these games to this day.

But that adversarial DM was just playing the game the way it was intended to be played, right? Old School D&D is cutthroat and the DM is your enemy, right?

What do the old rule books actually say is the role of the DM?
One almost finds a quote supporting this position on page 9 of the first edition AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide. On that page, when discussing how to use "wandering monsters," Gary Gygax uses the phrase "if a party deserves to have these beasties inflicted upon them..." which seems to imply a cruel whimsy underlying the job of DM. But taking that phrase out of context leaves out his advocacy of making the game fun. To quote, "if your work as a DM has been sufficient, the players will have all they can handle upon arrival, so let them get there, give them a chance. The game is the thing, and certain rules can be distorted or disregarded altogether in favor of play."
It seems here that Gary Gygax is arguing that the DM's job is to make the game fun for the players...including by bending the rules in their favor. To quote page 110:

Now and then a player will die through no fault of his own. He or she will have done everything correctly, taken every reasonable precaution, but still the freakish roll of the dice will kill the character. In the long run you should let such things pass as the players will kill more than one opponent with their own freakish rolls at some later time. Yet you do have the right to arbitrate the situation. You can rule that the player, instead of dying, is knocked unconscious, loses a limb, is blinded in one eye or invoke an reasonably severe penalty that still takes into account what the monster has done. It is very demoralizing to the players to lose a cared-for-player character when they have played well.

Here Gygax argues to not let dice get in the way of a player's enjoyment. Though I find the use of player and character to be clumsy in the above paragraph. It is no wonder some people thought that D&D was about "real" magic, when you write that "a player will die through no fault of his own." Player?! Holy!
Okay, so the AD&D DMG has some comments on making sure the focus is on fun and not competition between the DM and players, but what about the other old school books?

The Underworld and Wilderness Adventures (Original D&D)

(p.6) The fear of "death," its risk each time is one of the most stimulating parts of the game.  It therefore behooves the campaign referee to include as many mystifying and dangerous areas as is consistant (sic) with a reasonable chance for survival ...For example, there is no question that a player's character could easily be killed by falling into a pit thirty feet deep or into a shallow pit filled with poisoned spikes, and this is quite undersirable in most instances.

Even in the advice scarce Original D&D rulebook, Gygax goes out of his way to point out how traps with guaranteed lethality are "undesirable" in most instances.

Holmes Basic

(p.22) In setting up his dungeon, the Dungeon Master should be guided by...so that the adventurers have a reasonable chance of survival. (p.40) Traps should not be of the "Zap! You're dead!" variety...

It appears as if Dr. Holmes agrees with Gary that the adventures should be challenging, but not adversarial through his use of language.

Moldvay Basic

(p.B60) It is important that the DM be fair, judging everything without favoring one side or another.  The DM is there to see that the adventure is interesting and that everyone enjoys the game.  D&D is not a contest between the DM and the players! The DM should do his or her best to act impartially when taking the part of monsters or handling disputes between characters.

 Unlike earlier quotes, the bold and italicized emphasis in the Moldvay quote are straight from the book.  It's as if he is reacting to what he saw as a trend in the DM-ing styles he was seeing in the day. 

I don't believe that the rules of D&D ever advocated an adversarial relationship between DM and players.  I think they always viewed the DM as the arbiter of the rules and the facilitator of fun.  In my opinion, it was individual egos, and the natural desire to win sometimes, that created the killer DMs who believe as Tycho shouts.

My own credo is that a great DM has to be a great loser.  Yes, there are times when the monsters will win, but the DM is required to make it exciting for the players when the monsters are losing as well as when the monsters are winning.

ePawn: One Step Closer to an Affordable Digital Game Board

Even before I first saw the video of Carnegie Mellon students using the Microsoft Surface to play roleplaying games, I have been genuinely excited about the potential to have a fully interactive digital game board to use in my role playing an board gaming experiences.  The amount of storage space taken up with "dungeon tiles" and terrain on my gaming shelves is more than I'd like.  It includes cardboard tiles, printed cardstock tiles, and actual terrain pieces.  It would be nice to have a playing surface that projected the images, and only have to have 3-D terrain pieces on my shelf.

The main problem so far seems to be affordability, but based on this article at Tech Crunch affordability seems to be approaching.  The new ePawn pad plans to provide a decent playing area (26") for $400.   It also looks like it would be a great surface to play some of those app transitioned board games like "Small World."

What are your thoughts? Are you looking forward to integrated digital/physical gaming?

Mythbusters Fires a Broadside at Dublin, CA

Thank goodness that no one was hurt in this accident, because we can now make Monte Python/Mythbusters references.

Which RISK Would You Buy?

This holiday season features two intriguing new additions to the library of RISK games. The first is the release, by Hasbro, of RISK: Legacy.  In this edition of the classic game, the rules of play evolve over the course of play and game balance and rules will differ on play 7 from what they were when you opened the box.  This new version of the game has sparked some conversations through the gaming community, and I have to admit that the concept of choices made during one play of a game affecting later "fresh" plays of the game is an intriguing feature.  Fortress AT has a good discussion of the game and its features.  Tom Vasel gives a nice overview in the embedded video below.

The other intriguing RISK entry for this season is a SOLID SNAKE themed version of the game by USAopoly.

I am looking forward to both versions of the game, but which would top your Holiday shopping wishlist.

John Carter of Mars: Andrew Stanton Channels My Imagination

It is rare that film translations of fiction visually translate anything resembling the reader's imagination, but that is exactly what Andrew Stanton appears to have done with his adaptation of John Carter. 

More John Carter Videos

Disney...first they do a bang up job on an animated Tarzan, which was a fun if not ideal adaptation. Now this. Holy!