B is for Boardgames

It's good to see that the board game industry has become successful enough to warrant a Mo Rocca feature for CBS News highlighting game play -- and GenCon one of America's largest Hobby Gaming conventions. In the piece, Rocca rightly points out that Eurogames like Settlers of Catan helped to revive the board game industry, but his focus misrepresents some of the industry. Many of the games featured in the piece aren't European games, though they are Euro Designer Game influence, instead there are a number of American games in the mix as well.

One does not expect Rocca to talk about how the bookshelf games of 3M -- in particular those of Sid Sackson -- went on to influence European game design and were partly responsible for a board game book in Europe that has lasted into the present. I would just have liked the piece to make these designer games seem a little less exotic. That is often what makes them so accessible to a wide audience.



Enough complaining though. I'm really happy with the piece as it shows a broad array of gamers who attended GenCon and makes the games it feature look fun...and that is the important thing from my gamevangelization standpoint. Rocca's doing a nice piece of gamevangelization here.

I hope some of my non-gamer friends saw it and will ask if they can come over to play a game of Power Grid or Settlers. I just might be able to talk them into playing a game of Mansions of Madness or Castle Ravenloft afterward, and once that happens...it's only two steps to D&D.

A is for Armor -- Simulating Armor in Role Playing Games

In the almost 40 years that role playing games have been around, a number of traditional mechanics have evolved in order to simulate how armor protects individuals in combat situations. For decades people have debated the merits of the various systems and which more realistically emulates the underlying "physics" that ought be emulated by a rules set -- the important word being "ought." The mechanical preferences of players and systems is in part due to the fact that different games not only represent different time periods, they also represent different genre that often have very different levels of lethality when it comes to the combats being simulated.

Though there are countless ways that armor can be emulated, I have found that there are four basic mechanical structures that have been used to simulate the effectiveness of armor in combat.

1) Armor Class systems. The first role playing game to utilize an Armor Class system was the Dungeons & Dragons role playing game -- the first role playing game. In a "pure" Armor Class system, the armor the character is using affects how difficult the individual character is to hit in combat. In these systems, characters in better armor are harder to hit than characters in "worse" armor. Also factored into a character's Armor Class is how agile a character is, and thus how adept they are at physically avoiding damage. The system used in Dungeons & Dragons has its roots in the combat resolution matrices used in classic wargames like Gettysburg -- the so called traditional CRT. These tables compare an offensive skill value to an opponents defensive value and provide a numerical value representing the probability of scoring damage on an opponent. Just as a tank in Panzerblitz might have a defensive value of 6, a warrior in an Armor Class system might have an Armor Class of 6.

The average damage that any character receives during any given combat round can defined by the following linear equation:

Damage = (Probability of an attack hitting)*[average weapon damage + damage bonus] + 0

2) Damage Reduction systems. For many, the abstract nature of an Armor Class system seems less than intuitive and is less than satisfactory. To some, it doesn't seem intuitive that armor "makes you harder to hit," instead in can be viewed as reducing the amount of damage that a particular attack does when it hits. The first role playing game to use a Damage Reduction system was Tunnels & Trolls -- the second role playing game published. Damage Reduction systems vary in their complexity and end results. In some systems like The Fantasy Trip or Dragonquest, armor not only reduces the amount of damage your character takes from a blow, but it might actually decrease your own combat effectiveness as the system emulates how much a bulky suit of armor might affect your own combat capabilities. In these systems, there can be certain suits of armor that render certain weapons entirely ineffective as the maximum damage they can cause is less than the Damage Reduction value of certain suits of armor. This was not the case with Tunnels & Trolls, but has been for others.

The damage that any character receives during any given combat round can defined by the following linear equation:

Damage = (Probability of an attack hitting)*[average weapon damage + damage bonus] - Damage Reduction

3) Armor Penetration systems -- A modification of Damage Reductions systems are those systems where armors have an Armor Value that must be exceeded by a roll of a weapon's Penetration die. The innovative RPG Dragon Warriors uses this system for its damage determination. In this system while the value of the protective value of the armor, and the damage rating for any weapon, is static, the chance that the armor prevents damage is a variable number. In this case, the armor doesn't prevent the character from being "hit," nor does it reduce the amount of damage done. Instead, the armor acts as a barrier that either blocks all the damage of a "hit" or none. Like the earlier Damage Reduction system, there are circumstances where a given armor might be impossible to penetrate with certain weapons.

The damage that any character receives during any given combat round can defined by the following linear equation:

Damage = ((Probability of an attack hitting)*[Probability of weapon bypassing armor's Armor Value])*[Weapon Damage].

For example, Sir Hereward has a 50% chance of hitting Ambassador Vyle with his longsword. Sir Hereward is attacking with a longsword (d8 penetration and 4 damage), and Vyle is wearing chainmail (AV = 4). Assuming that Sir Hereward has no bonus to his penetration roll from Strength or magic, his longsword would penetrate Vyle's chainmail on a roll of 5,6,7, or 8 on an eight sided die (50% of the time)his average damage to Vyle would be:

Damage = ([.5]*[.5])*[4] or an average of 1 point of damage per attempted attack. Any successful attack would automatically do 4 points of damage.

4) Combination Systems -- the majority of the remaining systems appear to be combinations of the above mechanics. The Palladium Fantasy Role Playing Game uses a variation of the Armor Class system with the addition of the damage armor blocks being absorbed by the armor which can be destroyed if it takes enough damage. The GURPS game uses a Damage Reduction system that also includes a "Passive Defense" system that allows for armor to make an opponent miss outright. The Hero series of games -- because of its effects based nature -- actually uses both systems. One could represent Armor in Hero as either reducing the chance to hit, or reducing the amount of damage done -- though the system always includes some element of a Damage Reduction system. This is also true of Green Ronin's excellent Mutants & Masterminds game system (and their True 20 system as well), which uses both an Armor Class system and a Damage Reduction system and can have armor simulated either way. Games like Mayfair's sadly out of print DC Heroes role playing game have armor work in a modified Penetration system.

From the above discussion, you can see that regardless of the expressed preferences of those who use Armor Class Systems, Damage Reduction Systems, or Armor Penetration Systems, the average damage per attempted attack can be expressed in a similar linear equation for each. That equation being:

Damage = [chance of doing any damage]*[average damage] - Damage Reduction. Even D&D uses this equation, it's just that the Damage Reduction is always equal to zero. The Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game did attempt to add some granularity to this linear equation through the use of a weapon vs. armor modification chart which added or subtracted from the probability to hit based on which weapon was being used against which specific armor. This system wasn't widely used for a number of reasons, not the least of which were that it was unduly complex and that it didn't include sufficient modifications for weapon use against monsters.

As an aside, one could argue that DC Heroes is one of the few games that breaks completely free of the simple linear damage equation I gave above. It still can be represented in a linear equation, but the variables are modified based on a hit and damage resolution tables that aren't purely linear in its expressions.

Which is your preferred Armor simulation system?

Are there any simulation methods I left out that you admire?

Buy Dragon Warriors Before It's Too Late

At the end of March, the Dragon Warriors role playing game license currently held by Magnum Opus Press will expire. This means that one of the best fantasy role playing games to hit the market in decades will -- temporarily at least -- be unavailable.

Dragon Warrriors is a reprinting/reworking of the classic 1980s fantasy role playing game of the same name originally published as a series of standard sized paperback rule books. James Wallis, and his crew at Magnum Opus, did a wonderful job creating an aesthetically appealing set of rule books that contained easy to read text and presented robust game mechanics. The game was originally written by Dave Morris and Oliver Johnson, and some of the products feature work by the famous Undercover Economist Tim Harford, in an attempt to better capture the feel of Sword & Sorcery tales in a role playing system.

The game features an interesting setting and some of the best adventures written for any role playing game.

You can currently -- through tomorrow -- buy the printed rule books from Mongoose Publishing and the pdf versions at RPG Now. The rights will be returning to the Morris and Johnson, which is a good thing, but there are no immediate plans for a republication of the game. Morris and Johnson are currently promoting products related to Morris' -- also highly recommended -- Fabled Lands line of products. Sadly, Dragon Warriors has been overlooked by the larger fantasy role playing game community who have possibly been spending so much time with edition wars -- and have been missing out on some gems because of it.

Morris and Johnson are talented game designers and storytellers, and James Wallis has yet to make a bad product. Do your self a favor and pick these up now.

Atari's Warlords -- Then and Now

This summer Atari will be releasing a new version of the classic Arcade/Atari 2600 "Pong variant" game Warlords -- a game that was programmed for the Atari 2600 by Carla Meninsky who was one of the few women game designers of the era. The game is an example of Atari's ability to build upon the game play of prior designs and how one's perception of a game can be changed merely through the application of thematic elements.

If one were presented the graphics of the original game without the introduction of thematic/narrative elements, one might enjoy the game purely for its play but one would likely have very little emotional stake invested in success. By adding the narrative them of competing warlords destroying each others' castles, it provides the player with emotional stakes in succeeding and allows the player to project themselves into the role of a character. It also makes the player think about the computer opponents as if they have personalities. Listen to the voice over in the video describing how to succeed at Warlords, the reviewer discusses the computer opponents as if they were real opponents based on their AI behavior. This is only really possible due to the background and art provided in the instruction manual. Given the limited graphics capabilities of early Atari games, the packaging and instructions were often as important as the video game's visuals.

Now take a look at the modern variation of the game. While the inter-cutting of game play and interstitial makes it difficult to get a firm grip of game play at first, one can readily see that this is essentially a prettied up version of the original game -- with the addition that the number of players is variable. One also sees how advances in the graphics capabilities of games has added the ability to show players what they could only imagine in the past. The "floating warlord shield" of the original is purely abstract, while the newer shield is literally a shield attached to the walls of the fortress.

There is much to be said about the aesthetic appeal of the graphics for the upcoming game, they look humorous and fun, but there is also something lacking. The original graphics, while primitive from an artistic point of view, had a clean presentation that allowed for non-distracted game play. You don't have a lot of surplus imagery distracting you from the task at hand. Your mind is still imagining all of the chaos of war between you and your fellow warlords, but you don't have the very real visual distraction.

It is interesting how often modern games can forget that sometimes simpler is better and that we don't need HD cartoons for every game we play. Games like Uncharted and Assassin's Creed use increased graphics capabilities to create interactive movie experiences, and they are wonderful, but there are other kinds of playing experience that are equally fun. The new Warlords looks fun, but it also makes me long for the original. Much in the same way that modern Massively Multiplayer Role Playing Games make me appreciate the Table Top Role Playing Game experience.

Do We Really Need Airships in Our Three Musketeers?

Today I asked my inner 12 year old the following question, "We aren't really so jaded that we need Eberron-esque Airship/Zeppelins and Clockwork Assassination Weapons in our Swashbuckling Adventures...are we?"

He responded, "No, but c'mon! How awesome is that?!"

I had to concede that the Micheal York, Oliver Reed, Christopher Lee, Richard Chamberlain film almost perfectly captured the spirit of the books -- save for a few moments of slapstick -- and that Airships are indeed awesome.

Sucker Punch: Just What is Going on Here?

Many of the reviews for Sucker Punch have been scathing in their disgust for Zack Snyder's film. High on the list of many of the reviewers complaints is how the film promises to be a violent "sexploitation" film, and fails to deliver. Many of these critics accuse Snyder of presenting the audience with "near-rape fantasies and violent revenge scenarios disguised as a female-empowerment fairy tale wasn’t going to satisfy anyone but himself" or similar accusations. In a way, it is as if these critics' expectations have been "sucker punched" by what they witnessed in the theater. They expected a high concept tale of "kick ass chicks" killing Samurai, steam powered Nazi zombies, Orcs, Robots, and Dragons. They expected Buffy/Nikita/Project A-ko/Blood: The Last Vampire meets Gundam/Castle Falkenstein.

That isn't what they got, and it isn't what you should expect should you choose to go to watch this film. The movie is visually stunning, but it shares more with Scorsese's Shutter Island and del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth than it does with the expectations its advertisements create. It is a film of sorrow, hopelessness, loss, despair and the role that fantasy plays in dealing with these powerful emotions. The movie's tagline is "you will be unprepared" and I have never read a more apropos movie tagline. Most people think a tagline like that hints at a narrative twist in the movie, and there is one, but in this case the tagline is telling the viewer that the film's trailer isn't truly preparing the viewer for the experience.

So...if Sucker Punch isn't a high concept kick ass chick movie, and is instead a film of despair and fantasy, just what is going on here?


Sucker Punch is quite brave. In a world where critics, continually complain that no one is making "original" films. Snyder did exactly that with Sucker Punch. It is wholly his own creation, even with its obvious inspirations.

The film transitions between "dream" sequences and "reality" in a way that is unnerving and odd, but when one sees the end of the film one realizes that one watched something they didn't come in to see. The film has voice over bookends that tell viewers that angels watch over us and can be found even in the most horrific of places, and that these angels don't fight for us rather they inspire us to be able to fight even in hopeless situations. Given that despair can be viewed as the gravest of all sins, it seems justifiable that the role of angels would be to encourage us to fight rather than despair.

Sucker Punch opens with the death of "Baby Doll's" mother, an event that leaves "Baby Doll" and her sister in the care of their sinister step-father. This step-father finds out that his wife has left her not insubstantial wealth to her two daughters. The step-father responds to this news with rage and decides to take control of that wealth by physically, psychologically, and sexually abusing the girls into submission. "Baby Doll" responds by breaking out of her room, finding a gun, and arriving in time to prevent her sister from being abused. She shoots at the step-father...misses...and kills her sister by accident. She is quickly institutionalized in an asylum, where the father bribes an orderly to arrange a lobotomy for the girl. The psychiatrist who runs the asylum doesn't support the use of lobotomies, but in five days someone who does perform them will be at the asylum and the orderly will forge the psychiatrist's signature and arrange for the deal to be done.

Though Snyder spends an entire act developing this backstory, it is possible "Baby Doll" is not the "protagonist" of the film -- if the film's one twist is to be believed. I say "if the one twist is to be believed" because one could argue whether the film's "angels can be anywhere" message is the real message or whether the film is all a fantasy world created after after the lobotomy takes place.

There is something in this film, it is as brave as "Pan's Labyrinth" and shares many of the same themes, but Sucker Punch is not as good as del Toro's masterpiece.

Sucker Punch is a weird piece, and the more I contemplate the film the more I come to think that it is a strongly tragic piece. The more I analyze the structure of the film, and visual clues, the more I believe that any vengeance fantasy aspect of the film is exactly that...fantasy.

It's funny. In Pan's Labyrinth, I chose to accept the fantasy ending at the end as reality. I wanted so badly for the girl to be safe and to have succeeded in her tasks. In Sucker Punch, it doesn't matter whether the fantasy is the reality or mere fantasy, because the girl is "safe" either way.

The message is very much the same as Shutter Island. In Shutter Island a the protagonist has to deal with the twin horrors that his wife murdered his children and that her murdered her for it. He creates a fantasy world to deal with these tragedies. In the end, he despairs choosing to be lobotomized instead of facing cold reality. He asks the question, "would you rather live life a monster, or "die" a hero?" Sucker Punch asks the same question. "Baby Doll" killed her sister while trying to save her. She doesn't want this memory. She would rather be a savior that helps someone else escape a horrible situation. She has five days to do this very task and the film is about that journey...or is it?

It is possible that the film could have better met Snyder's honest intentions if it had been rated R, but I wonder if it would have reached the audience that should be watching this film.

There's something tragically humanist about this film that I think needs discussing. There is something there. I don't know that Snyder quite captured it, but I do know that one could have some genuinely interesting discussions about this picture akin to discussions I have had after Shutter Island.

It's a strange film that needs the idyllic fantasy segments to work, and I don't think the film would be better if the audience where shown Baby Doll's dances -- these dances seem to be the obsession of many critics. This is because the dances are only happening in one of the fantasy layers of the film. We never see the actual dancing because there aren't really any dances to see in the first place.

Snyder has layered his fantasy world in the following way:

Act 1 takes place in the real world and presents the back story that shows viewers why "Baby Doll" has been institutionalized, establishes the hopelessness of the asylum, and introduces the other characters in the film -- the orderly, the doctor, and the fellow inmates. This act ends just as a doctor is about to perform a lobotomy on "Baby Doll."

The baseline "reality" of acts 2 - 4 take place in "The Club," a combination burlesque and brothel run by the orderly, where the girls are all prostitutes and dancers. This is where "Baby Doll" works with the other dancers to create an escape plan, and this is where "Baby Doll" dances

Every time "Baby Doll" dances in acts 2 -4, the viewer is transported into "The Dream within the Dance." This is the world of the visually fantastic sequences we have all seen in the previews. This is also where "Baby Doll" meets Scott Glenn who, in a nod to his role in The Challenge, provides "Baby Doll" with weapons and tells her she needs to fight to survive. Glenn is the first glimpse of a possible angel we receive in the film, and he is introduced in a dream within a dream.

The final act of the film "returns" us to "reality." Return and reality are in quotes because this reality may or may be nothing more than the inner thoughts of a lobotomized mind. What happens in act 5 is entirely dependent on how you choose to read of the film.

I'd like to reiterate that acts 2 - 4 alternate between "The Club" and "The Dream within the Dance" depending on what is happening at that moment. The dances are used to signify when we are transitioning from one fantasy world to the next. All dances happen at the level of "The Club" and at no time does "Baby Doll" dance in the real world. The only reality we can be certain of is that "Baby Doll" is institutionalized, that she sees a possible way to escape, she attends therapy sessions, and then she ends up in a chair about to be lobotomized. What happens after that is up to interpretation.

My interpretation is a tragic one. In my view the final act is entirely fantasy because of the use of the word Paradise and the appearance of Scott Glenn in the act. This interpretation makes the film a tragedy that, far from being exploitative of young women, shows us how the power of the human mind to create fantasy can help us deal with the greatest horrors. The fantasy world is preferable to the real world, it is a better world, it is a world where we can fight for the survival of others and succeed.

Snyder should be admired for his effort and I think this will be a film that will be watched for stylistic and visual skills for years to come. I had fun during parts of Sucker Punch, but other times I felt distinctly uncomfortable. Snyder took me far out of my comfort zone by luring me in with one kind of tale and giving me another. I expected an action fantasy and received Shutter Island. I had expected a "kick ass chick" movie, but instead got a deconstruction of the genre. I found the film to be disturbing and thought provoking, a feeling very similar to how I felt after my first viewing of The Straw Dogs.

Over the course of his career so far, I have found Snyder to be a brave and wonderful film maker. He has made everything from 300 to Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'hoole without the slightest sense of irony.

It's Official! Steve Jackson Games to Release Ogre 6th Edition This Year!

Every gamer has a game, or 12, for which he or she feels a certain nostalgia. These games have likely been out of print for some time and may not have the market cache to justify a new release. The nostalgic gamer wishes that the publisher would release a version that "gets it all right," but understands that game publishers must make profits in order to continue and thus these wonderful -- but niche -- games get left behind. It should be noted that many of these now niche games were once huge successes that launched vibrant companies -- Gettysburg, Broadsides & Boarding Parties, The Fantasy Trip, and Ogre are fine examples of this phenomenon.

And at the top of that list -- for me -- lies Ogre. The game was released in 1977 and sold a very reasonable 8000 copies at he extremely reasonable price of $2.95. The game has gone on to sell well over 100,000 copies in various editions -- with continually higher quality components and prices scaled to match the increase in component quality. My favorite two editions of the game are the Deluxe Ogre edition printed in 1987 -- a 10,000 game print run -- which featured a traditional hard mounted map and large easy to read/play with counters and the 2000 combined Ogre/GEV which included these two fantastic games in a sturdy VHS like case. These were the game at its non-miniature aesthetic pinnacle.

Ogre's game play is simple and fun. It was the game that introduced me to the Wargaming hobby with its tiny chits and arcane rules formulations (e.g. rule 1.1.9 "Set Up") and showed me that abstract images on small pieces of cardboard could represent epic struggles against extreme odds.

Earlier this Month, Steve Jackson announced that a 6th edition of the game would be released this year -- even though market forces don't demand it -- and that the edition would be the game that players always dreamed of playing. Steve Jackson promises this new edition will include well designed counters and constructable Ogre miniatures. To quote the man himself:

Why? Because I want to. Ogre was my first design, and the boardgame version hasn’t been available for years. And people keep asking me for it. So some of our Munchkin money is going back to support the people who bought my very first game, by bringing them an edition with the best possible components.

It won’t be “Euro” style. No meeples, no plastic. This will be the kind of hex wargame that we dreamed about 30 years ago, back when our heroes were SPI and Avalon Hill. HUGE double-sided map boards. HUGE full-color counters with HUGE type. A HUGE box to hold them in. And giant constructible Ogres!

The first images of the prototypes were very impressive, but looking at the sales package that SJG put together for the GAMA Trade show are mind-blowing to me.

The unit counters are intuitive and elegant in their design.

But the Ogres...oh, the Ogres...

They are beautiful.

I must have this game!