Responding to Things We Think About Games: "Pants Issues"

I remember, fairly clearly, my earliest experiences with roleplaying games. I was introduced to the Dungeons and Dragons game by my dear friend Sean McPhail. His older brothers had been chatting about this new kind of fantasy game and Sean was pretty excited about it. It didn't take long for me to become as excited about the prospect of putting myself in the place of the great heroes of the fantasy genre. What if I was able to make decisions for Conan or Elric as they encountered dangers on some perilous quest?

My parents, noting my interest, made an 11 year-old me very happy at Christmas time when Santa brought me a Moldvay/Cook Basic Set, a Fiend Folio, a Deities and Demigods, and a Player's Handbook -- as well as several LJN D&D themed toys. The fact that this particular combination of books didn't contain all the rules necessary to run a campaign of my own didn't matter, they contained enough information to light my imagination afire. I made scores of characters and put them through the wringer that is Keep on the Borderlands. To be fair, I played Keep as if it were a strategy wargame and the characters I made were squad members, but I had a great time.

Then came the day when Sean and I were invited to play in a session of D&D at Sean's house with some of the older "kids." It was an absolutely eye-opening experience, both positively and negatively. My imagination ran wild with the possibilities and my youthful mind painted the scenes as clearly as if I were watching them on a movie screen. It wasn't that he Game Master provided ample descriptions of the locations, he hadn't, it was that my mind was able to fill in the blanks. Sean and my inclusion in the adventure came unexpectedly, so I didn't have any of my own characters and had to borrow one of Sean's. He gave me the choice of Aragorn or Gandalf, I chose Gandalf. How could I not? I was to play the great wizard Gandalf, who I had read about with such admiration. The fact that Gandalf was a first level Magic User with only one spell didn't affect me at all.

What did affect me was how poorly the Game Master ran the session. You see, he did the opposite of so many good Game Mastering techniques that the session Sean and I participated in was an almost ideal lesson of what not to do.

First, the game master informed us that he "didn't need the rulebooks" as he had them memorized and that as DM he was "God" and we would have to accept any decision he made regardless of how it represented our understanding of the rules.

Second, the game master didn't need to have any materials to help him run the adventure. He had memorized that as well, or rather he felt that he was perfectly capable of "winging it." He wasn't. Most people aren't unless it is in a collaborative rpg effort like Octane! or The Committee for the Exploration of Mysteries. These games work very well when the players wing it because the world construction is shared and the mechanics work to minimize arbitrary decision making. Or, as is the case with Octane!, the rules specifically discuss the disadvantages of arbitrary decision making. "Winged" adventures are more susceptible to capricious/vindictive GM behavior, or the feeling by players of the GM being vindictive.

Third, he viewed the game as a competition between the dungeon master and players. For him, the dungeon master "wins" D&D by killing off the players. Combined with the two techniques above, this creates the potential for what is possibly the worst gaming experience imaginable. In this case, much to my inexperienced dismay, it led to a violation of Things We Think About Games maxim #023:

In a tabletop roleplaying game, the characters are all wearing pants.

This is true even though none of the players informed the gamemaster that their characters were putting their pants on.
Issues such as these -- things that any person would do without comment -- are collectively "pants issues," and players in any sane game may always assert that they have done such things if it ever becomes important.

So what was Gandalf's "pants down" moment? I'm glad you asked.

After some time adventuring a dark and forbidding dungeon, and dispatching some horde of nasties or another, Gandalf, Aragorn, and their friends discovered a chest filled with treasure. Each character fixated on the item most interesting to him/her. For me, I mean Gandalf, that item was a magical scroll containing some arcane mystery. I shouted out immediately, "I read the scroll to see what it is." Thus was my fatal error.

Never mind that Gandalf had used his one spell, yes he only knew one spell as a first level magic user as this was the days before bonus spells for a character's high intelligence, Magic Missile during the earlier combat. In those days, casting Read Magic was a necessary part of deciphering a spell or spellbook. Gandalf hadn't memorized the spell and shouldn't have been able to read the spell. Gandalf, being more cautious of the dangers of untested magic than an 11 year-old, would also not have jumped out of his chair and yelled "I read the scroll!" You see, Gandalf had a high Wisdom score (14 or higher, though I don't know the exact number) -- much higher than 11 year-old me.

Gandalf would have known to take precautions. Never mind the fact that he would also know that he couldn't make anything of the scroll until he rested a day, memorized Read Magic, and only then would he be able to begin the process of unraveling the scroll's mysteries. He would have done those things, but 11 year-old me didn't and was merely excited by the mysteries of magic.

Then I heard the phrase most 1st and 2nd edition players are loath to hear, "make a saving throw versus petrification/polymorph!"

Uh oh!

Sitting at the far side of the living room, in a shadowy corner far from the prying eyes of the sinister and vindictive dungeon master, I could have pretended to roll dice and replied "I succeed!" Instead, I rolled the die and looked down with horrified eyes as the die roll was far beneath the value necessary to make the saving throw.

"I fail," I murmured meekly to the visiting DM.

"Your character has been turned into an Axe Beak," laughed my nemesis.

"An Axe Beak?!"

"An Axe Beak! Ha, ha! Someone get some rope to make a leash so you don't lose Gandalf."

And so I was punished and mocked for my excitement and wonder. I was too inexperienced a gamer, and too caught up in wanting to "play a story," to think that there were game masters who viewed the game play as a competition and who took pleasure from making players look foolish. I didn't know better than to read the scroll.

But Gandalf would have. He wouldn't, even at first level, have been caught with his "pants down." The DM used a pants issue to hose me and I have resented it ever since.

I wonder how many potential players we have lost through the decades because the person running the game used pants issues to hose the players for their own pleasure.

You Can Never Leave "The World of Martial Arts"

John Woo returns to his Last Hurrah for Chivalry roots with Reign of Assassins.

God I love wuxia films and the narrative tropes of jiang hu.

Responding to Things We Think About Games:When is a Game Actually Considered "Dead"?

In yesterday's blog post, I mentioned a couple of older games that had game mechanics that simulated or encouraged mundane activities in games devoted to heroic activities. These activities ranged from the item creation and crafting rules in Dungeons and Dragons Third Edition and DC Heroes post-character creation Gadgeteering rules to the Karma rules of Marvel Super Heroes and the kingdom governing rules of D&D's Birthright Setting. Looking back at that list, I realize that quite a few of those games are what can be considered "dead" properties. This got me to thinking about an entry in Will Hindmarch & Jeff Tidball's book Things We Think About Games:

STATEMENT 88
A game that is no longer supported is called "dead."

But that's business jargon. Don't let the state of a game line's release schedule determine whether or not you play it. Play it because it is fun.

Gamers who are active in the "Old School Renaissance" community are definitely followers of this maxim. Since the creation of the Open Gaming License, which put the mechanics of the 3rd edition of D&D into the Open community, the "Old School Renaissance" has been actively promoting the play of older role playing games. Some of the games that have benefited from this community's efforts include Dungeons and Dragons (Original, Advanced, and Basic editions -- I'm still waiting for the OSR 2nd Edition and the storm of controversy that will cause in the community), Gamma World, TSR's Conan RPG, and Marvel Super Heroes. Every one of these games has had an OSR reboot designed to introduce new players, or rekindle the imaginations of old school players, to the joys of those early systems.

These homage editions vary between efforts that retro-fit the rules set made open by the OGL and efforts that are designed under the assumption that the specific wording of rules can be copyrighted but not the underlying mechanics. Regardless of how technically correct those who design games under the second assumption may or may not be, they have all made a concerted effort to avoid use of undeniable product identity. Zefrs and 4C fall into this category and demonstrate how one can make an engaging rpg while stripping out the underlying trademarked source material.

I carefully couched my words in the above paragraph for a couple of reasons. The first is that I don't actually agree with the premise that the underlying mechanics aren't copyrighted with the other parts of the intellectual property. I would argue that those mechanics constitute the actual intellectual property and not the particular phrasing of those mechanics. Second, I think that these creators are doing us a great service. These products have been completely abandoned by their creators, with regard to the underlying mechanics, and a copyright system that doesn't take into consideration the concept of "abandonware" is in need of revision. Third, the Old School Renaissance community I was very active in during the late-nineties and early aughts took a very different approach to the issue -- and even that approach has some interesting complications.

I was a very active member of the DC Heroes online community, a community so active in the support of its game system that some of its members licensed the right to produce another game based on that system in order to keep it alive. That game, Blood of Heroes wasn't the most professional looking product with regard to illustrations, but it contained a meticulously playtested version of the underlying mechanics of the game. What is interesting is that even though Pulsar Games, a company made up of fans of the DC Heroes' MEGs system, licensed the use of the rules, they still may not have been perfectly within the law.


According to Ray Winninger, the author of the 2nd edition of the game and of a derivative work called Undergroung:

As for DC HEROES itself:

1) Our contract with DC specified that DC Comics holds the copyright on every product we released. If you check the indices, you'll note they all say "Copyright (C) DC Comics Inc." The contracts didn't specify anything like "Mayfair owns the copyright to the actual game rules, while DC retains the rights to its IP" or anything similar, just "all DCH products are copyright DC Comics-period." This would suggest that DC actually owns DC HEROES. I know for certain that DC *believes* they own all rights to the game and everything produced for it and I suspect they're probably right.

2) Greg Gorden believes that his contract specified that he retained ownership of the DCH game system once DCH was out of print. When I was at Mayfair I looked for this agreement and couldn't find it-but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. One potential problem is that it's unclear that Mayfair could have made such an arrangement with Greg in the first place. Remember, the DC licensing agreement specified that DC would retain full and perpetual copyright over everything we released.

3) Pulsar licensed DCH from Mayfair but it's not 100% clear that Mayfair ever had the necessary rights to grant such a license in the first place (#1 and #2 above). I believe that Pulsar later made a separate arrangement with Greg.

4) UNDERGROUND uses a variant of the DCH system-none of its specific text, tables or charts. The copyright to UNDERGROUND is not tied to the rights to DCH in any way. Mayfair no longer owns the rights to UNDERGROUND.

What is technically legal with regard to underlying rules hasn't been truly tested in a court of law, even though the Copyright Office has articulated that it is only the "form" of the rules that is currently protected -- tbone has some discussion why this should disturb the freelance game designer here. Personally, I favor greater protections for the game rules than the law currently holds, but I also am a huge advocate of greater creator rights and a diminishing of the dreaded "work for hire" that pervades the industry. There is no reason that Wolfgang Baur shouldn't have some ownership, in the form of residuals at minimum, if Hasbro decides to make derivative product from Dark*Matter except that the system of work for hire is broken.

On the positive side, the Wild West nature of the protections given to underlying mechanics do mean that we don't have to wait for a company to officially declare that something is abandonware before we start producing products using a reworking of the underlying mechanics for a neglected fan base -- and that's what we are really talking about here.

In a world where roleplaying game products can be stored on servers, at close to zero cost, for fans to purchase at any future time there is no excuse for a company letting a game "die." A company's bottom line with regard to a product doesn't determine the life span of play. It does determine the "product life span," but not the play life span. It is fans, and creators working after a product has "died," who determine whether a game is truly dead. And the internet has ensured that so many games aren't actually dead.

I still receive daily digests from the DC Heroes Yahoo Group. Every day someone is reworking the rules and converting characters. Savage Worlds would likely never have gained the audience it has today were it not for digital distribution and devoted fans writing for digital fanzines. The OSR is reviving games that I actually thought were genuinely dead. I was surprised to learn that people still play White Box D&D. I think it is awesome, but I was surprised.

In a post-internet world, when is a game truly dead? Does it require distributed support, even fan support to be counted as alive or does it merely need players?

What are your thoughts?

What If 16-bit Fantasy Games Were Designed by Bitter Divorcees?

The good folks over at SF Signal posted this amusing video featuring a more cynical view of what the solution to a side scrolling 16-bit fantasy adventure might be. In the video our intrepid hero rescues the princess, but then gets more than he bargained for as the material demands of the princess continually increase. One can imagine that this is a video game level that Oscar or Felix (of the play/movie/tv series The Odd Couple might design). Though the humor is cynical and staid, the video has its charms because one can actually imagine a game designer going to great lengths to create "meaningful" relationship tasks and goals within a video game experience. Such games may already exist.

I would be lying if I didn't say that the sequence where the video's protagonist goes to work for "the man" doing a task of physical labor, in order to pay for a wedding ring for his princess, didn't remind me of Peter Molyneaux's efforts at verisimilitude in Fable II. Molyneaux's game features complex systems for relationships (including financial support/gifts), real estate, and manual labor. In fact, I often joke that the amount of time I spent playing the "Blacksmithing" mini-game in order to earn money to purchase businesses/houses essentially transformed the game into a game of Blacksmith Hero. It was great fun to watch my labor equate to property ownership, which itself equated to revenue, though it wasn't fun of the combat/conflict variety. These tasks made my Fable II experience feel somehow more real. After all, even heroes have day jobs.

Even pen and paper roleplaying games sometimes offer their equivalents of the Blacksmith Hero experience. D&D 3.5's magic item construction system was a much needed rules set for the game, but the crafting rules could be utilized in a number of ways. One could merely have the players roll the skill checks and do the math, but one could also role play out the forging/crafting experience between the rolls. The 2nd Edition AD&D setting Birthright, one of my favorite settings, had sub-games devoted to govern the kingdoms and large scale battles. These sub-games were the setting's greatest strength and its greatest flaw. Superhero 2044 is essentially a pen and paper simulation of the "patrol" patterns of the superheroes being played by the characters. DC Heroes has gadget construction rules that can be roleplayed, and included recommendations for incorporating character's mundane -- but still meaningful -- sub-plots into the campaign. Marvel Superheroes rewarded characters for keeping up with their mundane lives while combating cosmic calamities.

What are your thoughts on the subject? Do mundane mini-games add realism to a fantasy video game? Do they detract from the experience?

Seth Rogen Green Hornet "Unexpectedly" Campy

Our good friend Bill Cunningham, he who (along with Harlan "freakin'" Ellison) has written a story for the upcoming Moonstone Green Hornet Chronicles and knows his Green Hornet inside and out, has the skinny on the upcoming Green Hornet movie.

It appears that the movie will be...

Prepare to look shocked.

You can do better than that.

CAMPY!

That's right. They promised the film would be serious and "dark" and "edgy." Apparently, what they meant by that is bright and silly.

We should have known when Steven Chow dropped out of the project and was replaced by someone with no Kung Fu that this was coming.

Oh Wait! We did.

Lone Wolf: Multiplayer Game Book: Does it Deliver?

In 1982, Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone created a worldwide reading/roleplaying sensation with their Warlock of Firetop Mountain Fighting Fantasy Gamebook. Warlock combined the interactive qualities of the Choose-Your-Own adventure series of books with simple mechanics inspired by role playing games like Dungeons & Dragons. The books were wildly successful with over 50 entries in the series published to date. The series is currently being published by Wizard books in England, we Americans have to have our new books in the series shipped from Canada or overseas, and also has had two of the books released as iPhone applications.

The Fighting Fantasy books are classics in the genre, but they were surpassed in gaming complexity in 1984 when Joe Dever's Lone Wolf gamebook series first title Flight from the Dark was released. The Fighting Fantasy series is primarily made up of episodic entries where the puzzles/adventures are contained in full in a single volume. The exception to this is Steve Jackson's Sorcery series of four books. In contrast to the episodic Fighting Fantasy series, Dever created an Epic Fantasy narrative in his Lone Wolf series. In Dever's series, your character improved from book to book and items you acquired in one book would help you solve puzzles in subsequent volumes. Dever added layers of gameplay and narrative that were lacking in the Fighting Fantasy counterparts, and his series demonstrated the gamebook as a mature medium.



In support of their Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, Jackson and Livingstone released an introductory roleplaying game -- a non-solo and more traditional game -- in 1984 entitled simply Fighting Fantasy: The Introductory Role-playing Game. This game presented the rules system from the Fighting Fantasy books in a simplified form for use in pen and paper gameplay. The rules component of the books was relatively weak, as the rules were stripped down versions of the already simple rules of the gamebooks, but the two adventures included in the book were fun.



This initial offering was followed by the Riddling Reaver collection of adventures, which made for a fun campaign using a rudimentary system. By 1989, Livingston and Jackson realized that the introductory game was serviceable, but not a substantive offering in the gaming marketplace and they hired Marc Gascoigne and Pete Tamlyn to develop an advanced version of the product.



Gascoigne and Tamly's Advanced Fighting Fantasy presented a robust game system rooted in the system presented in the gamebooks and filled a niche that fans of the books needed filled. Gascoigne's system added layers of complexity to the gamebooks rules, while still presenting an introductory roleplaying game. The system is simple enough for beginners, but has a depth that allows for a great deal of game play.

Fans of the Lone Wolf series, who had purchased and read the Advanced Fighting Fantasy rules, eagerly waited to see what Dever would come up with in response to Fighting Fantasy's offering. That offering didn't come. In fact, while the Fighting Fantasy books seemed as unkillable as a zombie horde -- continually being resurrected from certain death just as a new generation of readers could be introduced to the books -- Lone Wolf began to fade into the background. Eventually, all the published books became available (with author permission) as free e-books on the internet. Then, from seemingly nowhere, wonderful news appeared. Mongoose Publishing released a tabletop RPG based on the characters of the Lone Wolf series and began republishing (in beautiful small format hardbacks) the original Lone Wolf books.



The republished volumes of the original gamebooks are a marvel. They include new stories as additional content in the back of each book; stories that expand the Lone Wolf world. The republished books are undeniably a godsend, but the first Mongoose Lone Wolf RPG was a gaming product that had rules based in Wizards of the Coast's d20 rules system. These rules are serviceable (they are actually quite good), but they lack the distinct feel of the Lone Wolf setting. After playing gamebooks that use a particular rules set, it feels a little unnatural to use an unrelated rules set when translating your experience into a multiplayer exercise. The d20 based Lone Wolf rpg sold decently, but with the release of the 4th edition of Dungeons & Dragons -- and the end of the d20 license -- it was time for Mongoose to create a multiplayer game that returned Lone Wolf gaming to its systemic roots.

It has taken a couple of years for the new rules set to come out, but as of the the first week of April 2010 long time fans of Lone Wolf finally have a multiplayer roleplaying game based on the system used in the gamebooks, but how does it measure up to the standard set by the Fighting Fantasy series?



Even though the products are separated by almost 20 years, it seems appropriate to compare the new Lone Wolf Multiplayer Game to the earlier Fighting Fantasy offerings. The Fighting Fantasy Introductory Roleplaying Game was originally published in 1984 and in its 240 paperback format pages presented a multiplayer version of the rules system contained within the Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks. Other than the two adventures included in the book, and a couple of sparse paragraphs describing the job of gamemastering and designing your own adventures, the booklet contained little that was not already in the published gamebooks. In fact, some of the solo gamebooks had already introduced some "advanced rules" that the introductory roleplaying game failed to include. The two adventures included in the book were formatted in a manner similar to that used in the gamebooks, but included some tips on how to run the encounters. By modern standards these adventures were simple "dungeon crawls," adventures where characters explore complexes and fight monsters. There was little or no context for the action in these adventures contained in the rulebook. This changed when the Riddling Reaver booklet expanded the adventures available for use by gamemasters, though it should be noted that it was 8 years before players of multiplayer Fighting Fantasy had rules for "skills" or "magic" published outside of the solo gamebooks for multiplayer use.

The Lone Wolf Multiplayer Game Book is similar in many respects to the earlier Fighting Fantasy offering. Coming it at 70 digest sized pages, it contains character creation rules for only one character type, the Kai Lord. It presents the basic system used in the gamebooks, including the "random number table," with very few options not offered in the solo versions. Unlike the Fighting Fantasy books, Lone Wolf contains a task resolution system for accomplishing things other than combat. It is a simple resolution system, to be sure, but it is one that is highly serviceable. Essentially, tasks are given a target number from 1 to 10 and that sets the number that the player must roll equal or higher than on d10 (or select from the random number table) in order to succeed. There are guidelines for bonuses and penalties, but it is essentially a quick and dirty task resolution system with a flat probability curve.

Lone Wolf contains a short Bestiary that includes some of the unique denizens of Magnamund like Giaks and Gourgazs, and some of the more generic character types a game master might need like Bears and Bandits. It also contains a brief discussion of the history of Magnamund, the world of the Lone Wolf tales. One really wishes that Mongoose had beefed up the chapters on the setting. At $19.99 for a 70 page book, one feels a little neglected when there is so little setting description. To be fair, the gamebooks are rich fields filled with descriptions of the world and its history, but this rulebook lacks that richness and the map in the middle of the book is made less useful or attractive by the fact that it is published in black and white.

Like the Fighting Fantasy RPG, Lone Wolf provides an introductory adventure for new game masters to use with their friends. The adventure is an entertaining narrative adventure entitled "The Merchant's Task." This adventure contains gaming opportunities for different kinds of players as it has roleplaying scenes, puzzle solving, and combat sequences. As such, it follows the modern trend of story based adventures as opposed to the classic dungeon crawl, but then again that is one of the things that separates the Lone Wolf solo book series from the Fighting Fantasy book series. The Lone Wolf books are more story driven and the Fighting Fantasy ones more puzzle/solution driven.

I have to admit that I was slightly disappointed with the first offering in the Lone Wolf Multiplayer line of books. It seemed in many ways more an overview of what gaming would be like that a complete game in itself, and with a $19.99 price tag the disappointment was exaggerated. I have to say though that there are a couple of things arguing in favor of the game. First is the fact that it isn't a bad introductory game, if only the price were $7.99 I would consider it an ideal introductory offer. The rules are clear and simple and the text provides numerous guidelines for the game master during the adventure, guidelines that can be used to create ones own adventures. Second is the fact that this is the first in a series of offerings.



This June we should see the publication of a book of linked adventures entitled Terror of the Darklords. This is slated to be a 160 page booklet containing an entire campaign's worth of game play in which the players will uncover conspiracies and battle against the evil Darklords.




Darklords will be followed in July by Heroes of Magnamund, a book containing a variety of character classes that players can use during campaign play. One can look at this as the second part of the player's guide in some ways. According to the Lone Wolf Multiplayer Game Book the Heroes book will also contain rules for higher level Kai Lords and additional rules for game masters. Mongoose is also planning to publish a gazetteer of Magnamund and a bestiary as well. All of these products will add to the cost of the game, but will add much needed depth as well.

As it stands, the current rule book places the Lone Wolf Multiplayer Game Book somewhere between the Fighting Fantasy Introductory Roleplaying Game and the Advanced Fighting Fantasy Roleplaying Game with regards to the complexity of the rules it offers. A good offering, but not quite what one would pray for after almost 20 years of waiting. If the later releases maintain the level of quality, the game looks like it might surpass Advanced Fighting Fantasy, but only time will tell.

I can say that I will be eagerly purchasing the books as they come out to see what Mongoose has to offer.

Kobold Quarterly #13: A Must Buy for Dragon Age RPG Fans

Longtime readers of this blog know that I am a big fan of Wolfgang Baur and his Open Design Project. I am also a big fan of his quarterly role playing game magazine Kobold Quarterly and have been a subscriber since day one. I have watched as this magazine went from a primarily pdf product, where one had to special order the staple bound black and white version of the first issue, to the full color slick paper state of the art product it is today. This quick transition is no surprise as Baur has extensive experience as a magazine editor.

Throughout the magazine's run, I have only had one small complaint -- and it is very small. I have been disappointed that the magazine limited its focus to d20 (and after the new edition's release 4E) articles. The magazine's subtitle has been "The Switzerland of the Edition Wars. The market lacks a non-house organ magazine, one that covers gaming products from a wide variety of publishers. Early in the gaming hobby, there were a number of magazines that covered the role playing hobby as a whole. TSR's Dragon magazine and Games Workshop's White Dwarf weren't always house organs that only provided content related to their respective companies, they covered the industry as a whole. Add to these magazines like The Space Gamer, White Wolf, Shadis, and Pyramid, and you have a long tradition of magazines covering the broader hobby.

This tradition largely died when Pyramid ceased print publication and became an online subscription. Fans were left with only one magazine that covered the field, Knights of the Dinner Table. While Knights contains articles that cover he hobby, it cannot be argued that the magazine's primary purpose is the comic strips it contains and the promotion of Kenzer Company related gaming products. Knights is a good magazine, that does have some broad coverage, but it is still primarily a house organ. There is also the small print run magazine Polymancer, but that product has yet to get wide enough distribution to fill the much needed hole in the market -- a hole made all the bigger when gamingreport.com ceased to be the news source for the gaming hobby.

Thankfully, Kobold Quarterly has begun to see some generic and non-D&D (retro, modern, post-modern versions) content filling its pages of late. Key among these offerings is in the Spring 2010 issue. In the issue, Chris Pramas -- lead designer on Green Ronin's excellent Dragon Age RPG -- has written an article that will allow fans of Green Ronin's flagship Freeport line of products to translate their tales to the AGE engine used by the Dragon Age RPG. It will also help to expand the gaming horizons of new gamers who were introduced to the hobby by the Dragon Age RPG. The article provides character creation rules for nine backgrounds based on Freeportian archetypes. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Green Ronin's Freeport, it is a setting that combines traditional fantasy elements with tropes from pirate stories and horror elements from the weird tales of H.P. Lovecraft. Imagine Elven pirates wielding fireballs while battling Eldritch Horrors who fire cannons from their tentacle beards and you have some sense of the setting -- make sure you don't forget the Serpent men and the Yellow Sign. It's a fun setting and it is nice to see Kobold Quarterly publish support material for an wonderful new role playing game. The fact that the material is based on content originally designed for d20 makes the publication of the article even more appealing. It demonstrates that Baur is willing to promote articles that seek to expand the gaming horizons of all of its readers.

This takes Kobold Quarterly beyond the status of "The Switzerland of the Edition Wars," and places it at the "Publication on a Hill Promoting All Aspects of the Hobby" status.

Kudos to Baur, and thanks to Chris Pramas for giving us Dragon Age RPG fans a background for Gnomes. The DM in me cringes at the incorporation of Gnomes, but one of the players in my group will certainly be grateful.

Who's Up for An iPad Smoothie?

Until they release the 3G version, I think this might be the best use for an iPad.



Well, this or playing the new Small World app, but it seems a little ridiculous to pay $400 just to play a digital adaptation of a great board game.

David Gemmell Award for Fantasy Shortlist Announced

I was late in discovering the fantasy works of David Gemmell. Even though Gary Gygax's company New Infinities published the first American edition of Gemmell's debut novel Legend (they published it under the title Against the Horde), it wasn't until 2001 that I'd even heard of the author. A friend of mine (Tom Wisniewski), a player in my regular D&D group, mentioned that his favorite author was David Gemmell and that Legend was one of the best fantasy stories ever written. Based on this high praise, I bought a copy of the Del Rey edition and was so enraptured that I read the book in a single sitting. It has been that way with every other Gemmell book I have read. They aren't uniform in their literary quality, but they are uniform in their ability to get you to turn the pages.

Gemmell isn't my favorite fantasy author, but he was a fine example of what a author in the school of Sword and Sorcery themed fantasy can be. Robert E. Howard was the founder of this particular sub-genre of fantasy which merges supernatural horror with some traditional fantasy elements. It is a sub-genre that has seen its literary qualities undervalued due to the frivolous hack work of some of its supporters/promoters. The key criminals in this regard are L. Sprague DeCamp and Lin Carter. DeCamp was a skilled fantasist outside of his Conan and Howard related work and without Carter's editorial hand modern fantasy would be lackluster today. Both of these men were deeply influential figures in the fantasy genre, yet when either of these men got their hands on a Sword and Sorcery tale of the Conan school all they could produce was hackneyed drivel. Comparing Carter's Thongor, or his Conan "collaborations," to the Conan tales of Howard is like comparing a research paper I wrote in 5th grade to one I wrote in Graduate school. DeCamp and Carter did yeoman's work in promoting the Sword and Sorcery genre, but both did great damage to the literary respect the average person believes the genre merits.

David Gemmell was a writer in the Sword and Sorcery school, in the best sense of the term. He was the most "Howardian" writer of his era, something he accomplished without writing Conan pastiches. Gemmell's tales featured the deeply individualist protagonists and supernatural horrors that the genre demands, but he added other narrative layers as well. Like Howard, and unlike many other Sword and Sorcery authors, Gemmell incorporated historical events into his fiction. Gemmell's Drenai saga contains many tales pulled straight from Herodotus, including the Battle of Thermopylae which forms the structural basis for Legend. Gemmell also incorporated a sub-narrative discussion of Christian morality and "just war theory," something I cannot attribute to any other Sword and Sorcery author. Yes, other fantasy authors incorporate such discussions, but they don't tend to be in the Sword and Sorcery genre with its anti-hero protagonists and often nihilistic worldview.

This isn't to say that Gemmell's fiction was a kind of Christian apologetics or that they were works of evangelism. His discussion of religion, war, and heroism is what one would expect from a man who could be described in the following way:

Expelled from school at sixteen for gambling, Gemmell entered the world of work with little in the way of vocational skills and drifted through a number of casual jobs. These included labourer, lorry driver's mate and nightclub bouncer, a profession well suited to his robust six foot, four inch frame.

He isn't writing books to convert anyone or to preach. The religion in his books puts a context onto the violent actions of his villains and protagonists. The faith of the Gemmell books lacks simple Manichean dualism. It is a world where even though miracles happen, there is still suffering and heroes wonder why such suffering exists. Gemmell provides no answers. It is as if he is writing through is own musings on the topic, he is discovering rather than dictating. It makes for interesting reading.

That said, Gemmell's works aren't books that are meant to be read as religious tracts, they are adventure tales where heroes battle powerful foes to protect the things they value. Sometimes the heroes are redeemed villains, sometimes they are citizen soldiers, and sometimes they are murderous avengers who may never be redeemed for their actions. Most of them are compelling, and the vast majority of them partake in exciting adventures.

Gemmell's fiction is the perfect combination of Robert E Howard and Michael Moorcock. His writing contains the rugged individualists of Howard, but it also has some of the irony of Moorcock. He is very much an author worthy of having his name attached to an award.

The David Gemmell Fantasy Awards, now three awards, have released the list of this year's nominees. It is a list full of very good fantasy by talented authors. You can see the full list below as well as in the embedded video.

Of all the nominees, I think that Graham McNeill's Empire (Time of Legends: Sigmar Trilogy) (an excellent media tie in novel set in the Warhammer universe) and Joe Abercrombie's Best Served Cold are the two that fall most within the Sword and Sorcery tradition, but I am a fan of Brandon Sanderson's fantasy and am glad to see that he received two nominations.

Please read this year's nominees, but if you haven't read any Gemmell do give Legend a try.

The 2010 Origins Awards Examined Part 2 -- Children's, Family, or Party Game

Tuesday, I gave a list of all the nominees for this year's Origin Awards -- the Hobby Gaming Oscars -- and included some closer examination of two of the categories. I was impressed with all the Card Game and Board Game nominees, but it was probably pretty clear that a couple of them held particularly special places in my heart. As I mentioned in the previous post, the Origin Awards (Awarded in June at GAMA's Origins gaming convention) are the gaming hobby equivalent of the Academy Award. Technically, the Origins award is the official award of the "Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts & Design." The Academy is made up of both professional and hobbyists, and the nominee selection process has participation at the hobbyist, professional designer, and retail distribution levels.

This has been true for quite some time, and the public/industry nature of the award is one of its great strengths. Looking back at a February 1982 issue of The Space Gamer (one of the leading gaming hobby magazines of the 1980s) one finds a nomination ballot soliciting nominations from fandom at large -- a process that is not longer followed for a variety of reasons. In that ballot, the selection committee is described as follows, "An international Awards Committee of 25 hobbyists (some professionals, but primarily independents) directs and administers the awards system." I'll write more about the process in my post regarding the failure of some publishers to properly promote their work by submitting to the Juries this year in a future post. Suffice to say that the Academy is, and has always been, an organization of professionals and amateurs working together to ensure that the best in the hobby get proper consideration.

Today I'd like to take a look at another category. I'll be providing information about the Children's, Family, or Party Game nominees.

Children’s, Family, or Party Game

Are You The Traitor? – Looney Labs

As the Dice Tower review makes clear this game is a faster and more chaotic version of the traditional game Werewolf, a version that is significantly removed from the traditional game that inspired it. This is a game that has great potential for fun, or great potential for boredom depending on the group it is played with. One can imagine dynamic games where long conversation periods precede the accusation process, but one can also picture games where the accusations come so swiftly as to undermine the game play value. Typical of Looney Labs creations this game is very loose in structure and you need to consider the playing group that you are with before considering playing this game. One advantage this game has over traditional Werewolf games is that no players are ever eliminated from play. The winners of a round receive points and play moves on to the next round. This prevents any players from feeling left out as the game continues and is one of the great innovations in this adaptation.

Duck! Duck! SAFARI! – APE Games

Duck! Duck! SAFARI! is the latest in Ape Games duck! duck! series of games featuring a broad array of rubber ducky themed toys. SAFARI contains the rules and pieces for five different games, the rules for a sixth game have been added on the website, for players ages 6 and up. I am a fan of games like this, and Stonehenge, that offer gamers a decent bang for their gaming dollar. The package includes traditional race games and memory based games with excellent components. Besides, who isn't a sucker for things this cute?

Pack and Stack – Mayfair Games

Do you want all the panic and chaos of moving day, including wondering just how you are going to fit your giant library of games into the moving truck, without any of the back ache? Then Pack and Stack is the game for you. Mayfair Games has made a business of importing entertaining family games from Germany to the United States and this is yet another feather in their cap.

Ren Faire – Atlas Games

A few years back, Atlas Games released a wonderful little card game by the title Gloom which featured two wonderful game play innovations -- a requirement that to win you had to make the life of your opponent better than your own, and the use of translucent cards that layered effects on your base playing card. With Ren Faire designers Michelle Nephew and Wendy Wyman have found another way to create competitive play that doesn't feel competitive. Ren Faire is a game of Ren Faire noobs who are desperate to garb themselves in appropriate attire in order to fit in with the rest of the crowd. The game uses transparent cards to represent the clothing that will go upon your avatar, but to get those clothes you must play performance cards to earn the money to buy the clothes. This is where Nephew and Wyman's innovation comes in. Players must actually perform the actions described on the performance cards. This can lead to mayhem and amusement. Mechanically, this game is a perfect fit in Atlas Games line of non-rpgs. I have long considered their Once Upon a Time to be among the best games with regard to combining card games with performance, and now they have added another game to the list.

Word on the Street – Out of the Box Publishing

Ever since Out of the Box Games release their excellent Apples to Apples game, the company has been a leader in the independent Children's and Family game market. With Cineplexity, they demonstrated that they could make a movie trivia game with extraordinarily high replayability. Last year's release of Word on the Street once again demonstrates the company's ability to create trivia games with tremendous replay value. The goal of the game is to bring all of the letter tiles onto your side of the board by selecting a word based upon a category card, think Fact in Five, and pulling over every letter tile that the word contains one lane closer to your side. One twist, you have a time limit and when time is up you can no longer move tiles. You and your team must choose words that move the most tiles, but you must do so quickly and as the other team tries to distract you -- possibly by claiming that your word doesn't fit the category. Spend to much time defending the "legality" of your word and you might no move any tiles. The game combines elements of Scrabble, Boggle, and Apples to Apples to create an entertaining experience.

The Shattered Glass Project -- Jess Hartley's Fiction Foray into the Open Design Wilderness

A couple of years back Wolfgang Baur began a project that leveraged the hobby gamers' desire to support game designers they enjoy to create a revenue generating project taking advantage of the distribution possibilities the internet offers. With his "Open Design Project," Baur asked fans to become Patrons of role playing game adventures that he would design in collaboration with some patrons and distribute back to all the individuals who patronized his project. There were various levels of patronage that allowed for a greater, or lesser, role of creative input by the Patrons and also allowed for more individualized product offerings at the termination of a given project. For example, a high ranking patron would not only be allowed to have input on the content of the adventure, but would receive a signed copy of a printed version of the product as well.

Early in the process, the Patrons and Baur discussed whether finished products should be available for sale to the community at large upon completion -- perhaps after a given timeframe of Patron exclusivity. The answer was often some variation of, "No! We supported the work, we want to keep it special." Supporting a project often entailed a much higher price tag than is associated with buying a typical adventure at a hobby store, so the sentiment is easy to understand. This isn't to say that there haven't been projects "made public." Baur has done patroned work that was intended for public sales upon completion, and the vast number of Open Design bit torrents available has demonstrated the willingness of some patrons to completely ignore Baur's copyright -- and the rights of exclusivity shared by other patrons -- in order to make the "information free yo!"

In fact, it was upon seeing a group at my local gaming store playing an early Patron project that the GM announced proudly he had downloaded from a torrent that I cooled off on my patronage of Baur projects. I am still a patron of all of his projects, as of today, but the broad availability of torrents and my lack of time to participate actively has led to me reducing the level of my Patron status. I tend to be a mere "patron" rather than a glorious "Patron of the Arts," as I was in the past. Baur's project is inventive, and he is one of the better designers out there. He deserves your support, and not your scouring of the internet for a "freebie."



Speaking of deserving your support, on March 20th of this year Jess Hartley -- of White Wolf and other RPG design fame -- announced that she was beginning a patron supported project of her own. She calls the project The Shattered Glass Project and describes it as follows:

What is Shattered Glass?

Shattered Glass is a modern fairy (urban fae) short story, penned by Jess Hartley, which will be made available for a limited time, exclusively to patrons of The Shattered Glass Project.

What is The Shattered Glass Project?

The Shattered Glass Project is many things. It's an experiment. It's a work of fiction. It's a solution. It's a piece of art. And it's your chance to be directly involved in my work.

Why "Shattered Glass?"

Shattered Glass is the splintering of reality that happens when a person realizes that the world is not quite as they believed it to be. It is destruction, from which both damage and opportunity may arise. It speaks of magic mirrors and ice queens, of vandalized store windows and shattered windshields. It's the fragile nature of everything precious, and the value both of protecting that which we hold dear and knowing when to move on to something else when what we love is no longer good for us.

If you enjoy the thematic writing within the White Wolf gaming line, Jess Hartley is one of the writers who makes the flavor text of their games so engrossing. And let's be fair, it is the flavor text of the White Wolf games that helped them start a minor revolution that re-invigorated the role playing game hobby. For readers of White Wolf's flavor text, books and films like Twilight and Vampire Diaries are merely part of an existing obsession rather than new takes on older narrative tropes. As a contributor to White Wolf her work has been primarily within the re-imagined World of Darkness of the 21st century (if she contributed to the works in the 90s I apologize for limiting my credit giving to the more recent work), a re-imagining that broadened the scope of the line of narrative horror games. She has contributed to works within all aspects of the World of Darkness, but her largest area of contribution has been in the Changeling game line. In its 1990s incarnation, the Changeling game setting seemed mildly out of place. The game, with its focus on Faeries and the Fairy Court, seemed slightly out of place with the urban horror focus of the rest of the World of Darkness. With the re-invention of the line, and Hartley's contribution, in the 21st century version there is no longer room for doubt that Faeries can be as horrifying as Vampires, Werewolves, and "constructs."

With The Shattered Glass Project, Hartley is bringing her personal take on urban fae storytelling and I am looking forward to seeing the results. I have signed up as an "Artisan Patron." If I am going to participate in a Patronage project, I like to have something physical to which I can lay claim. I just don't trust that some other patron won't violate Hartley's copyright and make the digital version available beyond the "limited time." Which is a shame as all the revenue patrons contribute goes straight to the artist, which negates any "corporate overlords cheating artists" argument in support of piracy, and the virtual patronages are a very reasonable $5.

If you can't spend $5 to support an artist you admire instead of taking the product of their hard work for free, then you don't really admire the artist. Actions speak louder than words.

So if you are in mood for a -- possibly pretty dark -- modern fairy tale, give Jess Hartley's project a little support. I can't wait to see the results.

And Now for the Real AVATAR

From the looks of the second preview, the only problem with this adaptation of the excellent animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender is the casting.

Avatar: The Last Airbender is one of the best animated shows I have seen in quite some time, though Phineas and Ferb is on the list, and you can view some clips and a limited number of full episodes at the links below.

• Avatar Episodes
• Avatar
• Games

A-Team -- Second Trailer: Speaking of Things That Make My Inner 12 Year-old Happy

Tron as Advertised by Saul Bass

Readers of this blog know that I am pretty excited about the release of Tron: Legacy in 3-D this Christmas. I imagine it will be one of the first movies that my daughters and I watch together in the theater and sharing a small piece of my cherished childhood with my own children is something to which I am very much looking forward.

One of the things that I am interested in seeing is how modern visual techniques are going to transform the concepts that were presented in the original film. The original film was a visual tour de force. Its ability to translate computer concepts into beautiful visual metaphors was remarkable and the imagery in the film comparing the circuit like structure of the "internet" with the nighttime illuminated landscape of a modern city is one of my favorite transitions in all of film.

That said, after stumbling upon Hexagonall's Tron credits, and advertising, done in the style of Saul Bass, I have begun to wonder what a retro-remake of Tron done in the style of a Stanley Donen, Alfred Hitchcock, or John Frankenheimer would be like. Try and imagine the film that would follow these opening credits:

This is a movie that I'd like to see. In particular, I'd like to see how modern animators would face the challenge of doing a retro-remake that uses modern technology to achieve classic animation techniques. What animation style would be used to simulate the life within the computer? What would a retro-remake "innerverse" look like? What would the opening video game sequence look like? I don't know, but I would love to see it.

Wizards Announces Rollplaying for Roleplaying

As a part of their annual April Fool's "spoof product" tradition, Wizards of the Coast has announced the release of two "much needed" new products for any roleplaying gamer's collection with Roll-playing for Roleplaying and Dice-n-Wipes.

Of the two, Dice-n-Wipes is the more farcical as it pokes fun at the overly common superstitions of many gamers. The "karma cleaning" joke is one that has been done to the point where it has become almost dull, but the ad for the wipes is amusing in a way that adds a little freshness to the joke. I did find myself saying, "well, I could use these to wipe down my gaming mat." The fact that I found a real use for a joke ad was sufficient to make me laugh.

The ad that really amused me, though it pales in comparison to the brilliant My Little Pony role playing game ad from a few years back, is Roll-playing for Roleplayers. This product is also known by a couple of other names, The Amber Diceless System, Over the Edge, Vampire: The Masquerade "old school edition pre-diablerie roll-playing power creep," Bullwinkle and Rocky Roleplaying Party Game (an under-appreciated work by David "Zeb" Cook), and Wizard's own 4th edition Dungeon Master's Guide and Dungeon Master's Guide 2, as well as quite a few other products.

The point is, while it is an amusing joke to infer that a product is needed specifically to incorporate more "roleplaying" in a group that focuses on "roll-playing," the real irony comes from the fact that several products have been created specifically to produce this effect. Aaron Allston's classic Champions campaign product Strike Force is one of the best examples of a product of this type. Champions, like 4th edition and D&D in general, can easily fall into the "roll-playing" trap where everything is decided by die rolls and the "improvisational persona performing" that makes "roleplaying" so unique -- and is the aspect that Greg Stafford argues make "roleplaying" an artform more than a game -- can be abandoned for pure mechanics. The riff that D&D is "roll-playing" and not "roleplaying" is a riff as old as the hobby, and it is good to see Wizards have a little fun with the stereotype. The ad also takes a couple more self-deprecating jabs at Wizards; look carefully at the bottom of the book.



It just hit me that the joke of the book may be the fact that it is a book filled with rules that will better allow players to substitute "roll-playing" for "roleplaying" more fluidly, rather than the inverse -- which was my initial assumption. If this is the case, the joke is even better and more self-deprecating. What company in their right mind would release a product that intentionally provided rules designed to removed the "improvisational narrative" aspects of the game experience? Other than FATAL, Rolemaster, and Hero System 6th Edition I mean?

GAMA Announces 2010 Origins Awards Nominees

This week the Game Manufacturer's Association (GAMA) announced their annual list of Origins Award Nominees. The Origins Awards are the most prestigious award in the Adventure Gaming hobby and the winners are determined by the members of the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design, a committee of GAMA. This year's list contains a wide variety of nominees, covering many genres within the gaming hobby. The nominees themselves are selected by retailers and industry professionals at the Game Trade Show based upon a selection of recommendations from category juries. The juries are made up, as they have been since the early 1980s, of a combination of industry professionals and serious hobby enthusiasts. This ensures that the Origins nominations have input from fans, retailers, and creators which helps give the awards their well deserved prestige.

I will have some more comments regarding this year's nomination process and my disappointment with some of the publishers who failed to submit their products for consideration, but I wanted to take the time today to congratulate this year's nominees and to provide my input regarding the games and books that have been nominated.

Here is the list of nominees for the 36th Annual Origin Awards followed by my own commentary regarding the individual products:

Today, I'll be commenting on the first two award categories and will comment on the remaining categories throughout the week.

We begin with card games.

Card Game

The Isle of Dr. Necreaux – Alderac Entertainment Group

The Isle of Doctor Necreaux is a cooperative card game where the players attempt to rescue some of the worlds top scientists from the nefarious Doctor Necreaux. This game combines several features I find almost irresistible -- Pulp Villains, Gargantuan Reanimated Cyborg Apes (Julius Schwartz would be happy to see this too), and cooperative play. Alderac Entertainment Group has made a real push to move into the non-collectible, non-rpg, hobby game market over the past few years and it is really paying off with games like Necreaux.

Martian Fluxx – Looney Labs

Looney Labs Fluxx card game engine is one of the great underlying mechanical systems in modern card gaming. The game starts with only two rules -- draw one card, play one card -- and from there anything can happen as each card play modifies the rules of the game. These modifications can be anything from altering the number of cards drawn to establishing the terms by which a player can win the game. The Fluxx engine is a perfect example of how to utilize exceptions based rules mechanics to create interesting play. The first game in the series Fluxx was an abstract card game, in the sense that it had no theme, but Looney Labs eventually expanded the line with themed versions of the game where the cards featured their own twists on game play. Martian Fluxx is the latest entry in the series and uses the classic 50s style martian invasion as the basis for playing mayhem.

Poo – Catalyst Game Labs

Okay, how had I not heard of this game. A card game described as, "The Game of Monkeys and Poo Flinging" would quickly be added to my gaming shelf. This is especially true when the publisher responsible for the game is a company I trust for good game design and high quality components. It is also a company I hope will survive the year. Catalyst recently discovered, "that business funds had been co-mingled with the personal funds of one of the owners. We believe the missing funds were the result of bad habits that began alongside the creation of the company, which was initially a small hobby group. Upon further investigation, in which the owner has willingly participated, the owner in question now owes the company a significant balance and is working to help rectify the situation." This is a cautious way of stating that an owner/employee took money that belonged to the company for personal use, an occurrence that is all to common in the gaming industry. Catalyst assures its customers that the problem has been rectified. I hope so and I hope that the situation is handled in a way that prevents future damage to Catalyst.

The Stars are Right – Steve Jackson Games

Any time that Steve Jackson Games releases a game that isn't another in the long line of Munchkin related merchandise, it warms my heart and gives me hope that the company will continue to thrive. The fact that The Stars are Right is a fun game that whimsically plays around with eldritch horror is icing on he cake. SJG is currently suffering from what is often called the 80/20 rule where 80% of the company's revenue comes from one product line. Hopefully people will check out the great products that SJG has been producing over the past few years and realize that GURPS isn't dead and that SJG -- who started out as a hobby game company -- is producing great non-Munchkin games as well. While you're buying a copy of The Stars are Right, which you should, check out the new Pyramid online, Revolution, and the awesome new edition of Frag.

Thunderstone – Alderac Entertainment Group

Thunderstone is AEG's second nomination in this category, a fact demonstrating their smooth transition into the broader hobby game field. The game follows the recent trend of games like Dominion and Fantasy Flight Games Living Game System in that it combines the customization of deck building with the non-collectible nature of a traditional game. For many gamers, I count myself among them, this is an ideal combination. Players can construct unique playing experiences and combine card abilities in interesting ways without having to take a second mortgage on the home in order to afford the ultra powerful "rare" cards in the Collectible Card Game secondary market.

While I have played, and still play, a wide variety of role playing games, my favorite segment of the gaming hobby is the board game sector. Like the card game sector, it includes great games that can be gateway games to other aspects of the hobby. How many Talisman players went on to become roleplayers or miniatures aficionados? How many people became D&D players after playing Heroquest or The Dungeon? I imagine quite a few. The post "German-Invasion" years have seen the quality of components increase in the hobby as a whole. Where one might once have found that the hobby industry production standards were often lower than those of mainstream games, that isn't true for the modern hobby game. Gone are the days where games as fun and worthy of replay as The Creature that Ate Sheboygan are released by major hobby manufacturers with second class components like "die cut counters" and a poorly produced map. If that game were to be produced today, it would be a lavish affair with sculpted minis for the monster and sturdy components representing the defenders of the city. To be fair, the Charles Vess cover on the original game couldn't be much improved upon, but the rest of the games components would be vastly improved.

Board Game

Castle Panic – Fireside Games

Castle Panic follows the recent trend toward collaborative/competitive games. The players of Castle Panic must work together to defend the castle from the invading armies of orcs, trolls, and goblins that besiege it. A player can only become the victor of the game if the players succeed at their goal of defending the castle -- the winner is the player with the most victory points after a successful defense. Castle Panic is coming close to displacing one of my two favorite cooperative boardgames (Lord of the Rings and Ghost Stories) as a game that stays on the bookshelf in the "game room" rather than being relegated to the closet of gaming goodness or the storage pit of doom.

Endeavor – Z-Man Games

Z-Man games is a company who has made the transition from small press company, whose games had nominal component quality, to one of the leading hobby game companies in the United States. Endeavor is a perfect example of why this company has been so successful in the past few years. The game features all of the desirable qualities of a Eurogame. It features an interesting premise, players of the game set out in search of new lands and new civilizations in an attempt to expand their trading empire. The game plays easily, has high quality components, and only takes about an hour and a half to play a full game.

Small World – Days of Wonder

Days of Wonder doesn't release a lot of games, but every game they have released to date has been a winner. From Memoir '44 and Battlelore to Ticket to Ride and Mystery of the Abbey all this company has done is release playable and high quality games for hobbyists to enjoy. Small World is a fantasy reworking of the classic game Vinci. Both games are about expanding civilizations, but Vinci featured a larger map that enabled some players to avoid conflict during game play -- especially during 3 player sessions. The game is similar to Brittania in that players civilizations change over the course of play as their old civilizations fall into decline and they need to adopt new civilizations to keep generating points for victory.

Space Hulk – Games Workshop

When Games Workshop announced that they were re-releasing an updated version of Space Hulk with a limited production run, the young child in me screamed with giddy joy. When I found out that the release would be an update of the first edition rules, that Matt Forbeck lauded in Hobby Games: The 100 Best, my heart nearly exploded from excitement. I have always enjoyed the first edition and its mechanics and preferred them to the second edition (I own both). This version of the game incorporates rules from the original game and the Genestealer expansion and contains some of the most beautiful plastic playing pieces of any Games Workshop game to date -- and that is saying something. These miniatures are awesome. If you love the idea of playing a game inspired by Alien this is the game to play.

Steam – Mayfair Games

Martin Wallace's series of train games are some of the best games in the genre and Mayfair games is the leading manufacturer of train themed board games. With Steam they have a game that demonstrates why the genre is so popular. Players of prior Wallace train games will recognize the mechanics of the game, but this package has a lot to offer with its depth of play and quality of components. If you have never played a train game before, this is a great place to start.

While that completes the analysis for today's post, here is a list of the remaining nominees.

Children’s, Family, or Party Game
Are You The Traitor? – Looney Labs
Duck! Duck! SAFARI! – APE Games
Pack and Stack – Mayfair Games
Ren Faire – Atlas Games
Word on the Street – Out of the Box Publishing

Roleplaying Game
Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space – Cubicle 7 Entertainment
Eclipse Phase – Catalyst Game Labs
FantasyCraft – Crafty Games
A Song of Ice And Fire – Green Ronin Publishing
Supernatural Roleplaying Game – Margaret Weis Productions

Roleplaying Game Supplement
Big Damn Heroes Handbook – Margaret Weis Productions
The Day After Ragnarok – Atomic Overmind Press
Seattle 2072 – Catalyst Game Labs
Warriors & Warlocks – Green Ronin Publishing
Weird War II – Pinnacle Entertainment Group

Miniatures Figure or Line of Figures
Duke Rathar, Dragon Lord – Fantization Miniatures
Kings of War: Elves – Mantic Games
Marvel HeroClix: Hammer of Thor Expansion – WizKids
Monsterpocalypse Series 4 – Privateer Press
Warhammer Armies: Skaven – Games Workshop

Miniatures Rules
BattleTech: Strategic Operations – Catalyst Game Labs
HAVOC: Tactical Miniatures Warfare – Voodoo Ink Publishing
Larger Than Life – Two Hour Wargames
Warhammer 40K: Planetstrike – Games Workshop
Warmachine Prime Mk II – Privateer Press

Game Accessory
Arkham Horror Dice Set – Q-Workshop/Fantasy Flight Games
d20Pro – Mindgene, LLC
Forsaken Lands Poster Map – Maps of Mystery
Fortress of Redemption – Games Workshop
Knights of the Dinner Table – Kenzer and Company

Game-Related Book
BattleTech: 25 Years of Art and Fiction – Catalyst Game Labs
The Best of All Flesh – Elder Signs Press
Cthulhu 101 – Atomic Overmind Press
Deluge – Pinacle Entertainment Group
Legend of the Five Rings: Death at Koten – Alderac Entertainment Group

Historical Board Game or Expansion
The Hell of Stalingrad – Clash of Arms Games
Richard III: War of the Roses – Columbia Games
Conflict of Heroes: Storms of Steel – Academy Games
D-Day at Omaha Beach – Decision Games
Unhappy King Charles – GMT Games

Historical Miniatures Figure or Line of Figures
Wings of War Albatross D.III – Fantasy Flight Games
15mm Parachute Rifle Company – Battlefront Miniatures
15mm Ming Chinese – Old Glory Miniatures
28mm British Napoleonic Infantry – Victrix Miniatures
28mm World War I: Great War in Africa – Brigade Games

Historical Miniatures Rules
Flames of War: Open Fire – Battlefront Miniatures
Wings of War: World War II, Deluxe Edition – Fantasy Flight Games
Napoleon’s Battles, 3rd Edition – Lost Battalion Games
“La Salle” Napoleonic Tactical Wargame Rules – Sam Mustafa
Warlord Games Black Powder Rulebook – Warlord Games

Historical Miniatures Rules Supplement
Flames of War: North Africa – Battlefront Miniatures
Eternal Empire: The Ottomans at War – Osprey Publishing
Battles of the Seven Years War: Austria vs. Prussia – Test of Battle Games
Fields of Battle: Atacar es Vencer! – Spanish Civil War 1936 – Iron Ivan Games
Commonwealth Skirmish Scenarios – Southern Maryland Press