Role Playing Games and Candyland

I've had many conversations with friends where I have posited that the best introductory role playing games for younger players -- ages 5 to 9 -- are The Pokemon Jr. Adventure Game by Bill Slavicsek and Stan!, A Faery's Tale by Patrick Sweeney, Sandy Antunes, Christina Stiles, Colin Chapman, and Robin D. Laws, and RPG Kids by Enrique Bertran aka NewbieDM.  Each of these games comes at introducing RPGs to younger players and their parents from a different perspective, and each is a wonderful addition to any gamer's collection.  These games aren't merely good introductory games, they are also fun games for gamers of any age.

Over the past year, I have added another game to this list and the game might surprise some hobby gamers.  The game is the much maligned Candy Land by Hasbro.  Most hobby gamers look at Candy Land as a boring exercise in which the players have no influence over the flow of play, and as a game completely devoid of any kind of play strategy.  Anyone who has played the game knows that the only actions a player takes are to draw a card and to move his/her pawn to the space signified by the drawn card.  This simple randomized movement "track" game is so disliked that it has a rating of 3.21 on BoardGame Geek.  A quick look at what a 3.2 rating means on BGG, let's us know that the BGG community thinks the game is Bad and not worth replaying.  Even adjusting for BGG's anti-children's game bias by adding a point or so doesn't put this game into recommendable territory for most gamers.

Last December I defended Candy Land as a board game, and a quick look through the internet demonstates that the game is a rich source for statistical analysis.  Dave Rusin of Northern Illinois University and Lou Scheffer a researcher at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (which I first heard about in Tim Hartford's book Adapt) have both written good analyses of the game from a statistical perspective, but it is the rigorous analysis at DataGenetics by Nick Berry which truly demonstrates just how deeply one can dig into the statistics of the game. When I defended the game back in December, I highlighted the pedagogical aspects of play in Candy Land.  It is a wonderful game for teaching young people how to play games, and also aids in educating young players that not all victories come from "being better" than your opponent which helps to teach good sportsmanship.

What I only briefly mentioned in that post, was that Candy Land is a great role playing game as well.  Back in December I stated that one of the joys of playing the game with my daughter's History and Mystery was that it engaged their imagination's in storytelling.  I'm quite surprised that I didn't associate this with role playing and role playing games in that article, even though I described the way my daughters play the game as follows:

Rather than the goal of the game being to "go home" as is written in the rules, Mystery and History are on a journey to have tea at Hello Kitty's house.  To add to the immersion, they have placed Lego Duplo "cat legos" on the board at both the home and peanut brittle house squares.  The home square represents Hello Kitty's house and the peanut brittle house is the domicile of Hello Kitty's apocryphal twin sister "Boxie." 

Re-reading the post made me realize how much like a role playing game session that sounds, but my daughters go even further than might be alluded to in the above description.  History and Mystery also engage in dialogue with the Duplo cats and have conversations with Hello Kitty and Boxie when they reach their destinations.  In fact, it is more important to Mystery that her "Ginger Man" reach the Peanut Brittle square than winning the game.  What's more is that they use the first person singular "I" when they refer to their gingerbread man pawn.  The girls are completely immersed in the fictional world of Candy Land.  Not only that, but they have expanded the fantasy world to include their own imaginary components.

As a parent it is a real joy to watch my daughters engage in this kind of imaginative play.  They also role play when they dress up in their Iron Man and Captain America costumes, when they play with their Legos and cars as well as with various stuffed animals and dolls.  They even do some role playing when they borrow my D&D and Star Wars miniatures.  It's quite magnificent to watch, and it's truly amazing to see how well Candy Land creates a Salen/Zimmerman/Huizinga "magic circle" as well.  It demonstrates it so well that like Zimmerman in his defense of the magic circle, I find criticisms like that by Darryl Woodford a little pendantic, overly literal, and odd.  What is most interesting in this demonstration is that I get to see how the "magic circle" of play that my daughters have created during a game of Candy Land extend beyond the spaces on the board itself, but that the imaginary land in which they are playing includes implied spaces in the illustrations and their own imagined Candy Land environment.  This imagining only extends until they stop playing the game.  Once the game stops, they are no longer in Candy Land and they have already had their tea parties.  They are ready to begin engaging with the real world and their foray's into "Elfland" (to borrow a phrase from Lord Dunsany) are finished and without the trauma or life changes that accompany most fictional representations of fantastic journeys.  The magic circle allows them to explore Wonderland without the risk of the Red Queen chopping off their heads.  It's a wonder to see.

I wish that I was the first person to describe Candy Land as a role playing game, but James Ernest in Family Games: The 100 Best -- and I'm sure countless others -- have beat me to it. As he described his play with his daughter Nora:

When I got "stuck on a gooey gumdrop," Nora would move her pawn back to that space and help me get unstuck.  This completely surprised me, because as a grown-up I assumed that a race game is unfriendly.  She would move back to her own space after helping me, but she always helped.  And she expected this kind of socially responsible behavior out of her parents as well....

Anyone who thinks he has seen all of Candy Land ought to play it again with a child.

Candy Land may not be the pinnacle of role playing game systems, but it seems clear to me that my own "maturity as a gamer" is what got in the way of my enjoyment of this game for many years.  Playing it with my daughters is a joy, and I will rue the day when Candy Land no longer creates a magic circle where my daughters are imagining a realistic milieu.  I hope that when that day comes, games like Pokemon Jr., A Faery's Tale, RPG Kids, and even D&D will be able to create one to replace the one that was lost.  There is a part of me that thinks it is a tragedy when adults believe that spending some time wandering the fields of Elfland is a waste of time or silly.

Advanced Dungeons & Parenting?

As you may have noticed, this week I changed the name of the blog from Cinerati to "Advanced Dungeons and Gaming." There were a number of reasons I made the change, but I thought that I would share some of them with you.

First and foremost is that the name Cinerati didn't really do a good job of conveying the kinds of posts that were most common on the blog. There are still movie related posts like this week's post featuring the trailer to RZA's upcoming Kung Fu film, but the majority of posts on this blog are game and pop culture related and I wanted the name of the blog to reflect that. Though this blog started as a response to what I thought was a poorly thought out and reactionary article by Thomas Hibbs that a friend had shared with me, time has made this blog less and less theatrical focused.

One of the main reasons that this blog has become less cinema focused is the birth of my twin daughters Mystery and History (they're the surprised girls in the upper right-hand corner of the title card).  Since they have been born, I just haven't been able to go out to the movies as much as I used to.  What was once a weekly affair -- going to see two or more films -- has become a once a quarter if I'm lucky affair.  I still watch a ton of movies, thanks to Netflix/Hulu/Amazon/Redbox but I find myself less able to get super opinionated about things I watch on the small screen months after a theatrical release.

Since the twins were born, I've been playing a wider variety of games with my gaming group.  We still play D&D -- as we have for the past 12 years -- but now there are sessions of Savage Worlds, Cyborg Commando, Marvel (many editions), and other games to fill in the gaps.  Not to mention the increase in board gaming that has been happening in recent years.  It's been quite wonderful and I love chatting about games and gaming.

I also love playing games with my twin daughters and seeing the world of pop-culture through their eyes.  I never really understood just how much I wanted to share my passions with someone until I watched my daughters playing with a Star Wars coloring book.  When History saw Yoda, she immediately described him as "Darth Vader's Goblin."  At that point, I knew I had won at life.

My daughters love the new My Little Pony, Doc McStuffins, Phineas and Ferb, Jake and the Neverland Pirates, Star Wars, Captain America, and Iron Man.  History likes to dress up as Iron Man and Mystery likes to dress up as Captain America.  They both like to dress up as princesses (Aurora and Belle in case you're wondering).  It's truly magical watching my daughters express their imaginations and tell stories, and I am happy to let them tell me whatever stories they want.  I believe that a parent should set very few limits to how a child expresses its imagination.  I don't like it when some people say that "blue isn't a girl's color" or "there can only be one Captain America."  I want my daughters to find joy in whatever they find joy in.  I find it heart warming that a lot of that joy comes from "exercising their imagination show they can play with daddy and the fellas when they get bigger."

Expect to see the usual pop culture fare here at Advanced Dungeons & Parenting, but also expect to see some posts about my pop culture experiences with History and Mystery.

[Movies] The Man with the Iron Fists -- Red Band Trailer

Long time kung fu film fan -- and hip hop artist -- RZA has partnered with Eli Roth and Quentin Tarantino to bring us this little bit of Hong Kong inspired goodness.



 I love it when fans get the opportunity to tinker with the things they love. Sometimes those opportunities end up nightmarish -- like any of my attempts to emulate Michael Whelan art. Other times, they can lead to great entertainment. I'm hoping that RZA's "The Man with the Iron Fists" is able to inspire a new generation to experience the joys of classic Shaw Brothers films like "5 Deadly Venoms."

[Movies] D&D 3 -- When Your Trailer is Less Exciting than a Board Game Trailer it's Pretty Bad

It is a shame that the new trailer for the Descent 2nd Edition Board Game is more engaging than the new D&D movie teaser.

Before anyone starts thinking that this is going to be a screed about how the new D&D movie looks terrible, is going to be terrible, and how lame Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro are, let me make it clear that this will not be that kind of post.  Instead, it will be a post about how the movie looks like it doesn't have a budget, that even "bad" fantasy films can be entertaining, and how this is yet another legacy of the pre-Wizards dying TSR.

Let me say that thing that leaped out at me the instant I hit the play button on the new D&D trailer was how low budget it looks.  The CGI dragon looks more CGI than the dragon in a Kickstarter project I funded, the actors stilted acting makes it clear that the budget for talent was pretty low, the make up isn't very good, and the visual effects on the spells...well...let's just say that I'm less than impressed.  By all appearances Joel Silver has closed all stops and plugged up the budget everywhere...which is to say that this film appears to be the D&D equivalent of the Roger Corman "Fantastic Four" film.  It looks like Silver and company are spending just enough money on the movie to maintain the license.

Setting that aside, some of my favorite fantasy movies were made with zero budget.  What really seems to matter in these cases is whether the people making the project are actively trying to entertain you.  From what I know, and though I know someone who worked on the project that is still remarkably little, many of the people on this project really want it to work.  One of the writers on the film is a regular D&D player, has worked on a number of good rpg products in the past, and is an all around nice guy.  My hope is that this film can rise to the quality of a "Hawk the Slayer," "Krull," "Beastmaster," "The Knights of Bloodsteel," or even the second D&D movie.  I don't have much hope that it will be as good as the "Midnight Chronicles" movie that Fantasy Flight Games made, as that is a pretty remarkable piece of work considering its budget.  I don't think it is too much to ask that if this film isn't going to feel epic, that it will at least feel fun.  My favorite "D&D" movie is Jet Li's classic "Swordsman II" -- my second is his amazing "Kung Fu Cult Master" -- and if one takes off their "Hong Kong films are awesome glasses" it becomes pretty clear that "Swordsman II" is kind of hokey.  But sword energy is still pretty awesome.

All of the problems with this D&D movie, and the earlier two, can be laid in the lap of one single transaction and that is the sale of the license to Courtney Solomon in the dying days of TSR.  Courtney was 19 at the time and eventually managed to bring the film to fruition by partnering with New Line Cinema for distribution who purchased the rights for $5 million.  This ensured Courtney a solid payday, and ensured that until someone buys the license away from Silver, we are unlikely to get the "D&D movie we want."

The Best in Fantasy Fiction -- A Reading from "The Shadow War of the Night Dragons"

Many of the best works of Science Fiction and Fantasy are meant to be read aloud.  Ursula Le Guin describes the power of prose meant to be written aloud in her description of Tolkien's narrative prose in The Lord of the Rings in her essay "Rhythmic Pattern in The Lord of the Rings."  The essay was published in the book Meditations on Middle-Earth: New Writing on the Worlds of J. R. R. Tolkien, and like the book she is describing, the essay is a joy to read.  She describes such works as follows:

The narrative prose of such novelists is like poetry in that it wants the living voice to speak it, to find its full beauty and power, its subtle music, its rhythmic vitality.

It's a wonderful description, and it captures Tolkien's work perfectly.  There are places in The Lord of the Rings where my "silent reader mind" recoils from the page, but when the passages are given voice they come to life.

Some fiction was just meant to be read aloud...and that includes John Scalzi's Hugo Nominated masterwork The Shadow War of the Night Dragons Book One: The Dead City.  Like most works of sublime Fantasy, Scalzi's true genius is revealed by the voice of the reader -- in this case Mark of MarkReads.net.  As Mark reads the pages, the reader is given the pleasure of seeing how masterfully Scalzi combined Shakespeare's opening of Hamlet with one of the most endearing story openings of all time -- second only to Once Upon a Time in its familiarity to readers -- and wraps them in a stylistic bow of genius.

I dare you to watch this video and not be moved to tears.




Do you see what I mean?  What is striking about listening to this, as opposed to merely reading it as I have done before, is that it has affected the way that I read Patrick Rothfuss and Iain Banks.  Thanks to John Scalzi, the Culture Novels will never be the same again as they are surely sequels to Shadow War.

[Gaming History] Star Frontiers -- A Look Back at a Classic SF RPG

When TSR released the Dungeons & Dragons role playing game in the early 1970s, they created a new mode of gaming the role playing game.  What is interesting is that they failed to rapidly follow up the success of their "fantasy" themed role playing game with a succession of game releases in other genres.  While many of the first role playing games were shallow imitations of D&D...some were even Vacuous to use Gygax's terminology, it was other companies who first entered the marketplace with non-fantasy RPGs.

It wasn't long after the publication of D&D that Ken St. Andre drafted a set of rules for a science fiction themed role playing game entitled Starfaring, and Marc Miller published Traveller in 1977.  Where Starfaring was whimsical, and is a quintessentially 70s artifact that feels a bit like John Carpenter's Dark Star the rpg, Marc Miller's Traveller set the standard for science fiction rpgs.  In fact, Traveller truly set the standard for any rpg product line that was going to compete in the rpg marketplace.  Marc Miller's creation had a large following among the Space Gamer readership, and the publication of support materials for the game led to the growth of FASA -- one of the classic old RPG companies.  Traveller's success extends to the present, and Marc Miller currently has a Kickstarter campaign that promises a new edition that harkens to the old version.

Even though Traveller established science fiction as a viable genre for role playing games, it took TSR five years after the release of Traveller before they released their SF entry into the RPG marketplace, the Star Frontiers game.  When Star Frontiers came out, there were those who tried to compare it to Traveller, but I have always felt that the comparisons were slightly off base as they represent different kinds of SF.  Traveller's rules and back story, as well as the overwhelming influence D&D had on the early RPG market, gave the game a specific feel.  Characters created in the game are typically former military who are now retired, or as James Maliszewski has pointed out a good many were former Mercenaries.  Traveller campaigns had narratives along the lines of the Firefly television show, though it would be more chronologically accurate to say that Firefly has a Traveller feel to it.  Traveller's own backstory was heavily influenced by Asimov's Foundation series with it's dying empire.  Traveller campaigns were often gritty SF adventures filled with mercenaries and retired Imperial Officers spanning the Spinward Marches in pursuit of wealth and notoriety.

The D&D influence could also be seen in many Traveller campaigns, where players essentially wandered around the galaxy as pirates raiding Imperial space ships for their loot.  This isn't to say that all Traveller campaigns were "spacey dungeon crawls," the official adventures certainly weren't, just that some people played it that way.

The science fiction background of Star Frontiers was quite different from that of Traveller.  Where Traveller took place in a galaxy dominated by an interstellar Empire in a fairly settled area of the galaxy, Star Frontiers took place on the Frontier of civilization where a major corporation "Pan Galactic Corporation" -- later multiple corporations -- was sponsoring the exploration and attempting to profit.  The Pan Galactic Corporation had come into existence to promote exploration and trade among four major alien races -- Human, Vrusk, Dralasite, and Yazirian.  These races have only just begun to interact with one another, and have banded together on the Frontier of explored space.  At that Frontier, they soon discover a new enemy...an enemy that threatens to destroy any civilization that chooses to explore the Frontier.  That enemy is the Sathar, a wormlike race with hypnotic powers on the edge of explored space.  The exploring races have only recently completed their First Sathar War, during which they formed the United Planetary Federation, and are now having to deal with terrorist attacks and sabotage by agents of the Sathar...agents from among their own people.  In response to the Sathar's new warfare strategies -- espionage and terrorism -- the UPF has formed the Star Law Rangers who track Sathar agents and attempt to foil their plots.

The universes of the Traveller rpg and the Star Frontiers rpg have parallels in history.  One is of an empire in decline, the other is of mercantilism on the rise.  The tones of the settings are very different, but so are the rules.  Where Traveller characters are retired from former professions and already have a number of skills at which they are proficient -- especially if the characters were generated using the Mercenaries or High Guard supplements -- Star Frontiers characters are relatively inexperienced.  Even in the Expanded Star Frontiers rules, the characters have training in only two major skills -- and that training is at the lowest level.  The characters start near penniless and are in need of employment.  Players can be thankful that the Star Law Rangers are always looking for recruits, that the corporations are always looking for someone willing to risk Sathar attack while exploring planets on the Frontier, and then there's always the possibility of playing a group of Sathar agents...

Star Frontiers is a game that has a background that is rich in ideas for development...but it is also a game where one has to dig in order to find these ideas.  Trying to find out the history of the Star Frontiers universe is not an easy task.  Prior to the publication of Zebulon's Guide to Frontier Space there was not a clear timeline of the development of civilization.  One had to induct heavily from the introduction in the Basic Game rule book, read and reread the racial descriptions, and scour every module for minutiae to get a sense of what was going on.  Zeb's Guide did some of the work for you, as it advanced the timeline to a point after the modules and to a point where the Sathar had developed mind controlling organisms that latch on to the victim's back to take over the nervous system (fans of Puppet Masters and Iron Empires take note).  Taking the Frontier beyond an outline and into a fleshed out campaign setting takes time, but it is worth it.

I've read the rules many time, but have never actually played the game.  It's an easy system, though I've recently come up with an even simpler version of their Basic Rule with my own Extremely Basic rules, but I might just use the setting and play the game with another game's rules set.  Maybe d20 Modern/Future, they did write a Star Frontiers setting section for the d20 Future book and had a web expansion with stats for the Sathar, maybe Alternity, or Savage Worlds.  Heck...I might just use the Traveller system for it, when I get my copy of the 5th edition.  It's a great game too.

[Trailer Review] Enthralled by Luhrmann's GATSBY

I find the trailer for Baz Luhrmann's upcoming film adaptation THE GREAT GATSBY to be entirely mesmerizing.  From the rich sense of imagery -- always a Luhrmann strength -- to the haunting quality of the score.  The early section of the score I find weaker than the haunting quality toward the end of the video.  I don't know that GATSBY should be a 3D film...the thought seems baffling...but then I see Luhrmann's Time's Square and think it might just be worth the extra $3.