Board Game Madness

A long rant about publishing boardgames, and why you need to know the supply chain

2011-12-21T06:30:00.000-06:00

"It's like every game on Kickstarter is AWESOME!" I thought.
I was wrong: Lunch Box Board Game looks terrible. They are shooting for a $130,000 target, more than any game has EVER gotten from Kickstarter funding. The biggest one, D-Day Dice, had a crap-ton of good buzz going, a print-and-play demo, tons of sweet overfunding goals, and is apparently an awesome game lots of people want to play repeatedly. The second biggest one, based on long-running webcomic Schlock Mercenary, is by noted game designer (and, full disclosure, buddy of mine) Kevin Nunn, and is being published by designer/publisher (and, full disclosure, buddy of mine) Nicholas Vitek, who has had prior Kickstarter success with 1955: War of Espionage.

Seriously, go look at those three links. You need to see them, side by side by side, to appreciate how terrible in comparision the Lunch Box Board Game looks.
The Lunch Box Board Game folks' stated business plan is to print up 3,000 copies of a roll & move trivia board game. A little math tells us that they believe they'll spend $43 per copy.

From all my separate conversations with current and former Houston Gamers designers, as well as other small designer/publishers at Texas conventions over the years, almost all of them held to one basic math-based rule of thumb: to make any sort of money on a game, you need to print it for 1/10th the SRP (that's "suggested retail price," for you Elementary Education majors out there) you choose, based on your target market.
Mathematical proof follows:
You, the badass game designer, make the games for 10% of SRP, sell them for 18-20% of SRP to Fulfillment House Francine, who sells them to Debbie Distributor for 26-32% of SRP, which sells them to Roberta Retailer for 45-55% of SRP, who sells them to Cordelia the Casual Consumer for 100% of your SRP (or whatever the market will bear). Cordelia then plays the hell out of the game, and preorders a case of everything you ever design, forever, and also spends a ton of money on other games, funding everyone throughout the chain. The end, everyone involved is a winner.

If you print a game for $5, it better goddamn sell for $50 or less, or your entire business plan is SKY HIGH. You can make little burbling noises about direct sales through your website, and so on. Doesn't matter, it's not how gamers or game stores buy games, for the most part. Also, always keep in mind the key rule of board game fulfillment: "Shipping any product to anyone sucks, more than you can ever imagine."
When Cordelia the Casual Consumer goes to buy a game, she goes basically two places: her Friendly Local Game Store, and her 2-5 Friendly Online Game Stores That She's Willing To Support In The Sense That She Will Always Order The Cheapest Deal She Can Find, Give Or Take A Couple Of Bucks. She doesn't go to the manufacturer's website, because if she's buying online, she believes firmly that she deserves at least a 30% discount and/or free shipping, from the very first click. Hell, why should she? By and large, the websites are terrible and updated infrequently, and all the best information and discussion is probably over at BoardGameGeek, except when it's not [Q: Judge, can we do that sidebar that another day? A: You bet your tin star, Marshall].

Both those retail outlets typically buy from the distributors who buy from fulfillment houses, because no retailer wants to deal with 10,000 individual publishers' invoices, shipping policies, etc. It'd be like a bookstore trying to buy books from authors, one at a time, as they sold out. Likewise, the distributors deal with fulfillment houses, because they don't want to deal with 10,000 individual publishers. So you find a middleman who deals with the other middlemen, who ends up probably being Alliance. Go ahead, call up your FLGS and ask "Which distributors can you order from?" They'll be astonished that you don't think the games magically congealed on the shelf, fresh for your purchase.
Now, some printers do direct fulfillment as well... which means they'll charge you to print the game, charge you storage until your game sells, and then charge you shipping fees and fulfillment fees. The upside is they're probably much more likely to have usable warehouse space and a pallet jack-accessible ramp than your back bedroom (which is where all your printed-but-not-yet-sold copies would otherwise go).

Big whoop, you're just some dude theorycrafting
I've worked in a TOP SECRET game website warehouse, pulling, packing, and shipping orders. Endless details, endless headaches, endless parade of bullshit. The boxes are always either too small, or too large, and then you don't have the right size label, and then people in Forn Parts want to buy things in baht and rupees, you wake up in the middle of the night screaming, etc. Everything takes longer than you'll think.
Capitalism and the implications thereof
Once a fulfillment house or distributor gets bigger, they start offering bigger discounts on bigger shipping amounts, which means that our FLGS/FOGS could buy $500 of product from Distributor A, or $500 of product from Distributor B, and get a discount and probably "free" shipping out of the deal. If the Friendly Game Store of Either Type splits their order up into $250 to each distributor, oh, dang, no more discount/no more free shipping from one or both of the distributors. Again, dealing with multiple shippers sucks, so stores do their best to have one major distributor (usually Alliance) and a few minor ones as backup for what Alliance can't get.

The store is free to switch to another set of distributors, but realistically, they're all going to offer volume discounts because they, too, want to lump big pallets together and drop ship them, not break pallets down and goof with little 6-pack cases of games, etc.; If the FLGS/FOGS picks a good selection of merchandise and doesn't irritate customers, they'll make money and all is good. Also, for fun, figure out how big a case of 6 of your games would be, and then multiply that cubic yardage by, say, 250. The fulfillment house and distributors may not even want a bunch of copies of your game up front, so you may need to ship games a few cases or a half-pallet at a time.

What about Amazon, smart guy?
Maybe you can sell directly through Amazon and actually make money... reviewing the guidelines makes me think, "hmm, $40 per month fees, plus 15% of sales, that's not bad..." then I remembered that it sucks to have recurring fees. If you consider $480 a year plus a dime-and-a-half rake, forever, to be an unacceptable cost of doing business, you can also ship your stuff to Amazon and let them worry about it, with Fulfillment By Amazon (oh, look, a fee schedule!). Will you make money this way? Beats me. Hey, if you can't sell your stuff, Amazon will throw it in the trash! For free! If I'm reading this right! Which I may not be! Thank you, Dave Barry! For creating exclamatory sentence fragments!
So I'll do Kickstarter right, and rake in the bucks!
Mmmmmaaybe... you can pre-sell games via Kickstarter and actually make money. Some people definitely are. Presuming it funds and your printer doesn't screw you, you'll get to ship a lot of games quickly (once you get them from your overseas printer of choice), and your life will suck for a while as you deal with that, but then for the most part, you'll have time to breathe. You know up-front whether you're likely to break even, and you're avoiding a lot of fulfillment-house and warehousing charges. You also get to meet the public, just like in this thread where the Lunchbox Game publisher gets to hear why their plan is terrible, and dismisses all criticisms.

I think that Kickstarter has the potential to be good for the industry, because it's attacking a direly wasteful supply chain. Go back and look at that model. People print a ton of copies of a game, and they sit around, and then periodically ship them to Debbie, on to Francine, on to Roberta, and finally maybe Cordelia buys one.

It also has the potential to be very bad for the industry. When everything is being sold to the consumer "on spec," the potential to burn out customers is there. The Kickstarter limited-availability model aggravates certain types of completists, and frustrates others. Of all the products I've ordered via Kickstarter, fully half have been delayed by problems in the publishing supply chain (Alien Frontiers being the most notable). Sure, I'm supporting creators directly, but that just makes me more acutely aware of the slowdowns and disappointments involved (that card I supported for Eminent Domain is less cool than I thought it'd be. Good game, though.). At some level, I'm simultaneously kicking myself for supporting some things, while missing projects like the adorable Creatures card game, which was/is a great gaming value in a small package.

If you think to yourself, "Todd, this entire system sucks, I just want to make awesome board games and make a lot of money..." well, yeah. You need a hit, and probably two or three of them a year. Get playing, get designing, get playtesting. Cordelia is waiting; go make her some great games!

Bug in Firenze on Yucata

2011-12-21T01:04:00.001-06:00

Here's a screenshot. Guy had four one-brick towers, with no matching blocks in his reserve (not sure why one would do this) and I destroyed them all with a Tribute.

I am really enjoying Firenze, having played quite a few games of it since it was implemented recently.

The weekend: old and new

2011-11-21T18:30:00.000-06:00

Played two games of Puerto Rico on Saturday, winning one and narrowly losing the second (my own fault, even!). It was great to see all the High Altitude guys, have pizza, and hang out. I was a little late due to hitting Logan's 10th birthday party, but other than that, it was all good.

Taught and lost two games of Innovation on Sunday at the Cafe Express-Uptown Park Meetup. I'm not very good at Innovation, obviously. It's almost purely tactical, and there's a large random element. David, the other player, is an experienced gamer and caught on quickly.

I also cleaned the house quite a bit, moving a few games around on the shelves.

This weekend, next weekend (point-counterpoint edition)

2011-11-14T18:30:00.000-06:00

This weekend, I didn't play any face-to-face boardgames. I did:

clean the downstairs
eat pizza
Take 5 children between the ages of 2 and 7 to the Lego store at the Galleria
Successfully get family photos taken with great results (Jack Potts is the man, post should probably follow to that effect).
enable my wife to go to a girls' night out (ha ha, they did crafts).

Next weekend:

Guys' night out on Saturday. Boardgaming, natch.

What not to give on Halloween: Valentine's Day and Easter candy

2011-10-31T20:18:00.001-05:00

Actual candy my kids got from somewhere in walking distance from our front door:

Turning 37: Birthday Request: Go get on the National Bone Marrow Registry

2011-10-16T08:14:00.001-05:00

Yes, there's been a bit of a posting drought lately.

I've played Parade, lots of 7Ate9, the terrible and pointless Eaten By Zombies, an excellent game of Goa, Animal Upon Animal, learned Neuroshima Hex, taught Twitch, Forbidden Island, and 10 Days in Europe, so my time hasn't been completely wasted.

I also registered for the National Bone Marrow Registry yesterday. I've been an intermittent blood donor over the years, and recently moved up into donating double red cells (apheresis) which is the preferred method for my B-negative self to be doing.

A website I've followed for years, ChangeThis.Org, sent out an impassioned plea on behalf of Amit Gupta, one of their founders. Amit went to his doctor feeling a little run-down, and learned he has acute leukemia. Amit's a great guy, and he's made a lot of cool contributions to the world. I want him to live. Key is, he's gonna be tough to match.

Please, for my birthday present this year, if you're between 18 and 60 years old, go read Amit's story, and get on the registry. Every day counts. We can save lives, Amit's life among them.

The entire cheek swab paperwork and swabbing (4 long cotton swabs at the corners of my mouth, which you are handed and apply yourself) took 20 minutes from opening the door to heading out into the world. Make a contribution that could be life or death for someone in the future.

Labor Day Weekend Saturday gaming: a noble effort embiggens the smallest room

2011-09-27T16:04:00.001-05:00

After much effort and watching of music videos, I disassembled my downstairs pseudo-office to expand the front room's gaming space.
We had several couples join us and much gaming was had.

Late Saturday Gaming: Through the Ages Severe Beating

2011-08-28T09:00:00.001-05:00

After getting the kids to bed and the dinner dishes cleared, I headed over to Nick's. I ended up assuming Ed's position in a Through The Ages game. He had gotten amazingly shafted on resources; I ended the game in 3rd place (of 4), about 80 points behind the leaders.

After that, I barely lost a game of Glory To Rome to Nick and John E. - Glory To Rome is an outstanding game, and I'm always happy to play it.

Nick and I talked about dice, the high costs of specialty magazines, what's on his to-be-played shelf, and laser etching.

I dropped off one of the two loaner copies of The Magicians and picked up a stack of books to read.

Close-to-home Saturday

2011-08-27T19:14:00.001-05:00

Got in a game of 10 Days in Europe with Alex. Hopefully later on tonight, I can get some more gaming in. The 8th Dimension Opening Party is going on out at West Road and Highway 6, which isn't far.

10 Spot - Delayed Post From Last Week- I am always happy to play Merchant of Venus

2011-08-21T07:22:00.001-05:00

I had been away from my job since mid-Tuesday, after setting up for a week of gaming after work. Instead, I ended up flat on my back, waiting on x-ray results or muscle relaxers for said back to kick in.

Last night, I finally made it out of the house and over to Nick Vitek's place. Nick, John E., Luke, and I played the reworked Merchant of Venus, then Luke bailed. The three of us played Glory to Rome and 7 Wonders (with leaders).

I have mixed feelings about the MoV rework. The rules book is sorely abbreviated, and the overall palette was a little dark, especially compared to the original.

I picked up my Kickstarter copy of 1955: The War of Espionage from Nick, and asked him about a few things that will probably result in an interview posted here later.

Monday's draft (ironic)

2011-08-17T08:44:00.001-05:00

Played Money and Forbidden Island after work, played some new thing (Hibernia?) that Kevin brought back from GenCon.

This week is shaping up to be good gaming after work, presuming I can shake whatever back injury is flaring up.

Kid gaming

2011-08-06T15:41:00.001-05:00

Went to Laura and Michael's place to watch the kids. We played Forbidden Island, chess, Connect Four, and U-Build Sorry, then after a lunch break, played Roll Through The Ages.

Ascension with Alex

2011-07-27T17:41:00.001-05:00

Alex and I played Ascension. It was interesting. I really needed to have shuffled better, but cleanup is a snap compared to Dominion.

Sunday book buying

2011-07-24T21:59:00.001-05:00

Mobile blogger ate this post and I lost a fairly elaborate description of my day. Suffice it to say that I have a new favorite used book store: Long Lost Friends, at 4934 Highway 6 North.

Wednesday proto night

2011-07-22T21:25:00.001-05:00

Made it up to the T-House on Wednesday night and played Kevin Nunn's Roman Rummy proto (verdict: entertaining) and then we went to the 59 Diner, where we played Innovation. Good stuff.

Posted from the future!

2011-07-12T18:56:00.001-05:00

Sweet new phone... trying it out now.

Games that are/were "Worth It" - the longest post in a while

2011-07-02T12:25:00.000-05:00

In the last couple weeks, I've gotten in 3 games of Reiner Knizia's Money and one play of Blue Moon City after work, and one play of a thrift-store Monopoly Junior (with Alex).

Dave Lartigue had an interesting post here about his recent acquisition of Planet Steam.

It got me thinking about my game acquisitions. As a die-hard gaming enthusiast (distinction: collectors buy games, enthusiasts buy, open, and play games), my collection grew haphazardly over the years. Now that I purchase most of my own games, and have reached the limits of what I can fit in my house comfortably, new games that I have passing desires to buy need to be weighed against stiffer criteria. Where to start?

Even at a very early age, going to garage sales and auctions out in the back roads of southern Iowa, I was always looking at interesting things, board games among them. I remember picking up a copy of Parker Brothers' Shadowlords! at a Place's general store clearance for about $3. It's not a great game, but definitely has a lot of bits, and I spent a ton of time on it. My earliest game memory was a session where we discovered that at age 4, my sister Amy had absconded with a Roadrunner from an Old Maid variant during a game, and was sitting on it. I also spent a ton of time playing Monopoly with imaginary opponents, playing all kinds of Solitaire variants, reading tons of fantasy and sci-fi books from the local libraries, and sketching out games on pieces of cardboard, mostly variants of arcade games (looking back, my Gauntlet knock-off looks a lot like HeroQuest, and a racing arcade game inspired me to create something that looked a lot like Car Wars. I remember working with grids and trying to work out turn radius rules).

As a pre-teen, and later in my teen years, I was reading and writing Dungeons & Dragons material. I think the largest group of role-players I ever played in was 4 - one of the hazards of living in the country and trying to find misfits (sorry, RPG players) in a county of 5,000 people. I whiled away many hours out in fields, waiting on the next tractor, while idly flipping through a Wargames West catalog ("Dial 1-800-SAY-GAME"). I think that might have been the first toll-free number I ever dialed. There were huge, nay, gigantic lists of games, books, and miniatures of every stripe. It must have been at least a hundred and fifty pages, printed on the worst, cheapest, flimsiest paper available. I remember the year they clearanced out their 1st Edition AD&D sourcebooks for $3 a pop (cover price was a whopping $15), and I got the Oriental Adventures and Dragonlance Adventures hardbacks. I also had a subscription to both Dragon magazine and Dungeon magazine.

Eventually, I did submit an adventure article to Dungeon, who sent back a polite no-thanks. I also got an small supplement article for Call of Cthulhu published in a tiny independent mag called Vortext, which I think lasted about 10 issues before folding. I got two free extra copies of the magazine, I think I might have gotten a couple extra issues of extension to my subscription, and $9.50. Plus, of course, eternal fame.

As I entered college, I fell in with a group of like-minded folks, and we played a lot of offbeat RPGs, good older American boardgames, and a lot of collectible card games. We disdained Magic at the time, because I was poor. Looking back, I think it's for the best. I had a lot on my plate, and adding one more distraction to the variety might have knocked me even further off the path than the rest of them.

Of the RPGs I played in high school and college (as opposed to bought and hauled around endlessly from dorm room to dorm room), from worst to best experiences:

Mage: it's a game about magic, and the magic rules... sucked. Generic "we crapped this out in an afternoon" campaign setting, too.
Shadowrun: listless elves&dwarves&cyberpunk bullshit that never seemed to gel properly.
Changeling: never clicked with our group. Interesting setting, but more of a toolbox.
Tales From The Floating Vagabond: I think I ran one adventure of this. It's okay, I guess. Does what TFoS does, worse.
Vampire: did I ever play this, or just vaguely flip through it and make fun of it? Still better than Shadowrun. I'm too straightforward to care about 95% of the political aspects.
Werewolf: at least the setting was more coherent.
GURPS: endless variety, endless min-maxing.
Dungeons & Dragons: Most of my experience with this was pre-college, so it's getting a big nostalgia bump. As far as bang for my buck, definitely the D&D Rules Cyclopedia.
Call of Cthulhu: I ran a couple of games of this, poorly. Hey, it got me my first published article, it should at least be in the top half.
Ars Magica: I know, it's cheesy, you can roast a Thanksgiving turkey faster than make up a character for the first time, but dang, it oozes theme like a 99-cent burger oozes grease.
Teenagers From Outer Space: One book. Ten bucks. Fast, fun, ridiculous. No violence, no sex, no brooding.

All of this leads to my real point: I was flat-out-terrible at making purchases to expand my collection. I had absolutely no way of looking up reviews, and I also was fairly insolvent most of the time. I had a vague list of things I'd like to acquire, thanks to endless perusal of Games Magazine and the aforementioned Wargames West catalogs. I typically made bulk purchases via mail-order or expeditions to civilization (i.e. malls). I had virtually zero impulse control once I was in the store and if I saw something I wanted at the time and had cash in my pocket, I spent it.

However, I did get a lot of books and games that rewarded careful re-reading and thought (GURPS sourcebooks in particular), so I don't regret those purchases overall, with the exception of, uh, well, all my INWO purchases after meeting Mr. Suitcase, any D&D purchases after 1993, any CCG purchases other than INWO and Mythos, all my Mythos purchases past the $100 mark total, pretty much any book published by the Judges' Guild, GURPS Ice Age, Nephilim, anything related to the Elric RPG, and also the inexplicable AD&D Book Of Wondrous Inventions. I never owned sourcebooks for most of the less stellar RPGs on my list, which may have explained why I didn't enjoy playing them as much. Without carrying the books around endlessly, I never really fully absorbed the rules and setting, so I missed the nuances of, say, Shadowrun. Wait, what nuances? The president is A DRAGON. Madness!

My eventual point to this is that most board and card games don't offer a grand re-reading opportunity and once purchased, the time to boredom rate, unless they actually hit the table with other people around, is pretty low. Collectible card games where you've got enough cards to actually tune decks are one exception, as are solitaire games, which I've never explored in depth. Print and play games also increase the play-with-without-actually-playing time. I've been gradually remaking 18AL and 18IA components over and over, experimenting with different materials and techniques.

By and large, the vast majority of enjoyment I get out of games I don't play is in reading the rules and handling the bits. The rules are online, and the bits are 90% interchangeable. Also, I have an entire collection worth of components to enjoy.

Of all the games on my shelves, should they be destroyed by force majeure, I could get the same actual play enjoyment by re-buying about 25 games [n.b. said before compiling list below]. The rest are just hanging around, either waiting for the right group to hit the table, the right life circumstance to have the time, as mementos that I've moved beyond, or as potential trade/sale fodder.

The winners: What's actually in category 1, and not in any particular order:
Roll Through The Ages, San Juan, Race For The Galaxy (plus expansion 1 to get the extra start worlds), Puerto Rico, Power Grid (yes, with extra maps), Ubongo, Wyatt Earp, 10 Days in Africa, 10 Days in Europe, Transamerica, Alhambra, Twitch, Travel Blokus, Falling!, Starbase Jeff, Fluxx, Aquarius, Dominion/Dominion Intrigue/Dominion Seaside (but not rebuying Alchemy), Loopin' Louie, Merchant Of Venus, Blue Moon City, Blue Moon with all the decks (but not rebuying Buka), Tsuro, Alien Frontiers, some Magic cards, Give Me The Brain Deluxe, Thunderstone (I would begrudgingly buy Wrath of the Elements, too), Glory To Rome, Light Speed, The Big Cheese, Light Speed, Jacob Marley Esq., Ra, Rack-O, and Attika.

The right group/right life circumstances (this includes games acquired but still in shrink, OOP games acquired but never played, and games that I played once or twice and then never got back to the table):
Velo City, 1861, 1870, 18AL, 18GA, 18IA (yeah, I count my own design here), Theophrastus, Agricola, Ubongo Extreme, Railroad Dice/Railroad Dice 2, Aladdin's Dragons, Homesteaders, Fische Fluppen Frikadellen, 1960, Power Grid: Factory Manager, Beowulf: The Legend, Phoenicia, Battlestar Galactica, Funkenshlag, Roma, Outpost, giant stack of Settlers stuff (totally would not re-buy Seafarers, by the way), Hacienda, Ursuppe/Primordial Soup with the expansion, Cults Across America, Tigris & Euphrates, Medici, Terra Prime, Pandemic, Burn Rate, Duck Duck Safari, various other thrifted kid stuff like Monopoly Junior, quite a few Cheapass Games.

Made obsolete by time*:
Ticket To Ride, Seafarers of Catan, RoboRally (wait, did I trade this off already?), all my RPG collection, most of the thrift store acquisitions.

Actively in my trunk, awaiting trade/sale:
Twilight Imperium 2nd ed, Order of the Stick, Castle of Magic, and a box full of others too lame to mention. I just can't see it happening.**

There's a fifth category, of course. I've got games I've ordered on the way, either in auctions on Boardgamegeek or through Kickstarter. I keep swearing I'm not going to buy pre-orders, but then I do. Part of the hazard of knowing designers like Kevin Nunn.

My future projected purchases over the next year or two: Ascension (played, like it), Thunderstone: Dragonspire (played, like it), Glory To Rome 4th edition (played, different building powers from my set, higher quality cards, much better quality player aids), 10 Days in the Americas (played it, liked it), the rest of the Race For The Galaxy expansions (one of my favorites, wife also plays it)***, probably the occasional Magic deck or booster, NOT any more Dominion sets until I've played them, NOT any Agricola expansions, NOT any Catan reworkings, nothing cooperative, no new collectible games, and pretty much not the new hotness, whatever it is, especially if it costs more than $60.

---- footnotes
* Seriously, you're going to sit down and crack open vanilla Ticket To Ride? It takes about 20 minutes longer than the fun in the box. Likewise, if I'm going to make Catan longer and more complicated, then I choose Cities&Knights over Seafarers, hands down.

** Okay, I might read up on Order Of The Stick: The Shortening, but only because I know, and have packed games at the warehouse for, Kevin Brusky. RoboRally's also a great game for my nephews.

*** If I can find or trade for a base game of Race For The Galaxy, I might trade for a second copy, just so I can have just the base game. It definitely plays differently with the first expansion in it. My wife and I play Race fairly regularly, and she's talked about re-sorting out the cards, which sounds like a lot of work.

Gaming with the church class

2011-06-15T18:51:00.000-05:00

This weekend my wife and I got a chance to play board games with some friends from church. We played Puerto Rico, Roll Through The Ages, and Wyatt Earp.

In case anyone was wondering, my default games to take to an event are:
Can't Stop
Roll Through The Ages
Wyatt Earp
San Juan
Race For The Galaxy (mostly as a visual aid)

Whatever happened to Rory Blyth?

2011-06-15T18:32:00.000-05:00

Hmm. Neopoleon.com isn't working. Just an observation.

Summary and Catch-up

2011-05-27T21:11:00.002-05:00

After-work gaming has been going well - I've recently played Bang, and taught Wyatt Earp and San Juan. Also have at least one person interested in learning Race For The Galaxy.
At home gaming - I sold off a big box of games for a fistful of $20 bills, also I played Dominion with Jonathan and taught him Thunderstone this week.

Our new windows are in, and the reorganizing is still in progress. It's going to look great and be a lot more conducive to having people over. (gaming party, gaming party)

Gaming at work

2011-05-04T07:35:00.000-05:00

Woohoo, got in two games of San Juan last night after work. Good stuff.

https not working in Chrome

2011-05-01T11:16:00.000-05:00

Good work, Google! I can't open any https websites using Chrome. You broke twitter, gmail, my mortgage, and my regular bank pages.

Why I live at the post office

2011-04-18T23:42:00.000-05:00

It's been a crazy couple of weeks since I posted.

Work: I'm about to hit 90 days and that will be awesome. Can't remember when I was so engaged at work with a suitable level of challenges.

I got a boxful of great-quality two-part telescoping game boxes from Games On The Brain, suitable for 18IA copies.

I did what will probably be my last trade on BGG (my copy of RoboRally for 1870). It took almost two weeks for me to get around to shipping it (I threw Coppertwaddle and Chez Geek in as an apology) and honestly, for almost $16 shipping, was it worth it? I have removed almost everything from my for-trade lists on BGG as well - the vast majority of offers were pathetic and insulting (e.g. someone offered me a $4 thrift store "rare" Careers game for old-school Arkham Horror, etc.)

I also went to the Dallas Games Marathon, which was awesome in almost every way, and took a couple of big boxes of games to sell up there.

We are embarking on an entire-house decluttering project/window replacement project that is also massively disruptive to blogging.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery: Getting scraped by a spammer again

2011-03-29T22:19:00.000-05:00

My entire blog is being scraped by a spammer with a .cc domain. I reported them to Google Ads and at least one of their link affiliates.

This blog is mine, mine, mine. Your theft sickens and offends me.

Chris Onstad quotes Neil Gaiman, and that's okay: I say nice things about a guy who draws a cartoon on the web about a cat with depression

2011-03-21T23:39:00.000-05:00

To quote Roast Beef, one of the protagonists in Chris Onstad's long-running webcomic Achewood "Ohh shiiiit!"

Achewood is meandering, obscene, and brilliant. I'm indebted to an old friend of mine for continuing to send me links until I got some traction on it. I've been following the strip on and off for years, and I have Achewood on my Chrome Most-Visited page. The strip updates, in theory, whenever the creator feels like it, which has been once in February 2011, once in January 2011, twice in December 2010, and so on. If you go back far enough in time, you can actually see his creative juices drying up, day by day.

Today, Chris Onstad speaks, and what he says is Fine By Me. He links to a fairly-famous-in-some-parts Neil Gaiman essay, in which a fan asks why George R.R. Martin is living a pleasant existence, despite the fan's urgent and burning desires for Martin to produce the next novel in a long-awaited series, and is reminded of their place in the writing ecology. Gaiman's sage response is simply, "George R.R. Martin is not your bitch." Now, Gaiman won both a Hugo and a Newbery Medal, so anyone who wants to complain about his use of language can get bent. What did we, the collective readers, expect of Onstad? To continue cranking out Achewood like a robot till the sun went down on the American empire forever and the neuromancers were walking the wastelands?

Reading Onstad's blog, it's hard not to leap to the conclusion that Roast Beef's troubles with depression are hyperbolic variations on the author's own difficulties. On one hand, writers seem to be prone to depression. On the other hand, Onstad probably never committed mass murder (Nice Pete), bribed a police captain (Ray), or did a bunch of smack and got tossed over the gates of a rehab clinic inside a KFC bucket (Todd T. Todd the Squirrel). Just writing that makes me want to go back and re-read the best parts of Achewood, like the Great Outdoor Fight sequence. Onstad captures perfectly the riotous highs and lows of human behavior, and at his height, does it with a sort of effortless grace that lesser writers like me admire.

Am I disappointed that he's not producing Achewood strips M/W/F without fail? A little. But I also have to see the economic reality behind webcomics, q.v Dorothy Gambrell (of the phenomenal Cat And Girl)'s infographics or R.K. Milholland's FAQ concerning the events of 2003-2004. I'm not sure of it, but I suspect that in a month, I'll have better and far cheaper health insurance than Evan Dorkin. Our culture has no way of rewarding adequately the creation of brilliant ephemera. Read Stephen King's notes about writing short stories, or Jack Chalker on the same subject in his essays in Dance Band On the Titanic. There is a tremendous gap in our new buzzword-heavy internet lifestyle.

Then, too there's the creative mentality, the one that keeps Brad Bird from doing sequels... (Yet somehow John Lasseter is making Cars 2 a reality.) The best and most honest career advice I ever got was from a VP at a giant corporation I worked for, once upon a time, during a speech to the company during tough economic times. "If you don't like what you do here... if you don't enjoy your job... I mean, at least a little, please quit. It's okay, you won't hurt my feelings. You'll be happier and we'll be happier. Trust me. People who aren't at least a little bit happy at work don't do good work. Don't leave us in the lurch, but don't stay in the long run if you're not happy."

Ill wind this post up by saying, Chris, if you're reading this, thanks for being there all these years. Thanks for Roast Beef and Molly's relationship, especially in the strips of 2008, and thanks for keeping the strip going as long as you did. If you don't post on Achewood again, rest assured that you are not forgotten, you made a mark on at least one reader, and You Are Rad.

Friday/Saturday/Sunday

2011-03-13T22:34:00.000-05:00

Friday I took Roll Through The Ages to work to teach to the gaming group that meets after 5 pm. As it happened, I was on the phones until 6 pm, but managed to get over there about 5:20 and spend a few minutes walking them through a turn and clearing up some confusion.

They finished their first game a little after 6, and after swapping players out, we ended up playing a second game, this time with 4 players. They caught on pretty quickly, and there were a few other spectators, including one of the guys who writes an internal-only blog which is excellent... he was mostly killing time till a 7 pm conference call.

Overall, they all had a great time with the game, and all used different strategies. I also took the time to quiz them about various other things they've played... sounds like they've got a decent background in Euros, so I'll be a good addition/complement to the group.

On Saturday afternoon. we headed to my wife's parents' place in La Grange, for a laid-back visit. The girls had a great time, and after Lee and I finally got them to bed, we played one quick game each of Roll Through The Ages and San Juan. I was glad we'd brought them, since I initially hadn't been sure we'd make the time to play.

Today I didn't get in any gaming, but I did go hold some kittens at PetSmart with the girls (which was almost as good), and a guy at church I taught Puerto Rico said he and his wife bought it and taught it to another couple last week. Depending on circumstances, we might get in another game night on April 1 for Parents' Night Out, and then a couple weeks after that, I head to Dallas to meet Jacob for the Dallas Games Marathon.

First World Problems

2011-03-05T20:56:00.000-06:00

I emailed a buddy the other day to let him know about a copy of Merchant of Venus that had showed up on Ebay with a buy it now price around $80. He's been talking about it for some time and jumped on it immediately- copies are going for $120 these days.

I had considered buying it myself, but 1. I already have a copy. and 2. even if I told myself I'd turn around and flip it, my track record at doing so isn't all that stellar, and 3. I could already feel myself buying it to resell, then changing my mind and hoarding it as a spare.

Mayfair Games is re-releasing an expanded version of 1830, one of the earliest and most venerated train games in the 18xx series. It'll retail for $70. Internet cheapskates are already lining up to discuss price vs. value.

Since last I posted

2011-02-23T23:17:00.000-06:00

Hmm, acquired 2 more games somewhat accidentally (Roma and Terra Prime) and played the new-to-me games 10 Days In The Americas (probably don't need this,given that I already have 10 Days in Africa), 11 Nimmt (buying for sure) and Jaipur (probably buying).

Also I have a pre-order of the Alien Frontiers reprint that should start doing something, at some point, soon. It's an excellent dice-roller Euro, probably fits a similar niche as Roll Through The Ages but is definitely less bland-looking.

I hate the new Lifehacker design

2011-02-09T18:56:00.000-06:00

I'd like to congratulate LifeHacker for becoming massively uglier and less user-friendly. You've made it infinitely harder to browse between articles, and made your page lopsided, to boot. You've also broken every URL in your site, so nice going. Truly, you have achieved Web 2.0.

Miscellaneous

2011-02-07T00:50:00.000-06:00

Whoo, new job, day 6 starts in 8 hours and 18 minutes.

Also http://instantbazinga.com/ is about what you'd expect, so there's another single-use website for you.

Other than that, I did Owlcon a couple weekends ago, and the first week at work was interesting.

Also bought Thunderstone: Wrath of the Elements.

Admiral's orders

2011-01-19T08:46:00.000-06:00

You heard the admiral! Get buyin'.

Two more single-use websites

2011-01-04T15:52:00.001-06:00

http://inception.davepedu.com/ -an Inception button.

http://www.justhellapornoallthetime.com/ - Not 100% as promised.

Mag-Con 2: A pretty dang good convention

2010-12-05T03:02:00.001-06:00

I just got back in from Mag-Con. Lots of games played, lots of fun had. More to come, just a quick note as placeholder.

Another single-use website

2010-12-02T14:01:00.001-06:00

Does what it says: http://priceisrightlosinghorn.com/

Book Review: Lev Grossman's The Magicians - buy it

2010-11-21T17:01:00.000-06:00

I've been thinking about it, and Lev Grossman's fine novel The Magicians was so good, I finally broke down and bought a copy with some Borders credit I had gotten for my birthday. My capsule synopsis: "Protagonist Quentin Coldwater ends up in a magical prep school and has a terrible time of it," hardly captures the engrossing nature of the novel.

Grossman paints a picture of a dynamic, sometimes vicious universe, much like our own, but more magical. This is the best novel I've read in at least a decade. The Magicians carries an emotional heft that leaves me thinking about the plot twists and bigger issues long after I've put the book down.

This is the book my literary buddies and fellow fantasy readers are getting for Christmas.

It's loaded with surprises and dire, holy-crap-didn't-see-that-coming perils, both physical and emotional.

Eminent Domain playtest kit assembled!

2010-11-13T14:44:00.000-06:00

Michael Mindes and Seth Jaffee's Eminent Domain fundraiser still has 10 days to go, so sign up for cool limited edition copies.

After pledging in support of Eminent Domain, I got the playtest files from Seth and have now assembled the game cards, which didn't take too long, given that I already have a cutting board and a bunch of penny sleeves.

I hope to get in plenty of games later on today at the Houston Gamers.

Goa with Len/Goa with Chris

2010-11-12T19:19:00.002-06:00

I played two games of Goa recently, one as a three-player game over at Len and Crystal's place with Len and Steven, and the other over at Chris and Marcie's with Chris. Goa is one of those frustrating games that I love to play - it's an auction game, it's long enough I've never gotten in back-to-back games in an evening, it's distressingly-opaque for newbies, it's out of print (probably not to return in the same format), hard to acquire, expensive, and oh, yeah, the rules translations and interpretations are dubious.

There are four great mechanics Goa has going for it: the players' choice of tiles for auction, the once-around auction format where money either remains in circulation or removed, based on the outcome, the action-point concept where you want to do everything (but are limited to three actions a round), and the ability boards where every player 'levels up' separately, creating asymmetrical choice from the start.

The two games were dis-similar. In the 3-player game, I won the auction for the 4-ducats-every-round tile, in the first round, no less. This enabled me to bid wildly, and our game was massively inflationary. In the 2-player game, Chris and I were trading measly sums back and forth, with the flag typically being won with bids of 2-3. Len and I came within a couple of points of each other, and Chris blasted me out of the water with expedition cards.

Both were great, fun sessions (before that, at Len's, I had come in last at El Grande, another awesome, frustrating game).

The expedition card track feels useless at first, until you're halfway down the track and are drawing at least two cards, and also the cards are distressingly varying - it feels as though Greg Costikyan's rules of game design are being bent, if not completely broken.

I believe what I'm going to do next time is propose we follow one of the rule interpretations from one of the published versions, and limit players completely and totally to the expedition card limit on the track - if you draw up or acquire more in any way, you need to discard down to the limit immediately. This rule probably helps players who are behind more than players who are ahead, and prevents blowout victories of people who get their 5 card limit, then continue acquiring cards by advancing to the last two ranks. Depending on which rule translation you follow, you may have been playing that way already.

A note concerning a short conversation

2010-10-19T20:05:00.000-05:00

Lately, my best conversations start with "Daddy, [insert name here] at my school said we need to [do something inconvenient]."

Yesterday, Cori (age 5, barely) said, "Daddy, Mr. Garza at school wants us to sell a lot of candy. If we sell a whole lot, we even get a pizza party!"

It's almost all stuff to which she's allergic, or otherwise wouldn't eat. Our family is doing the right financial things, which means we won't be spending a multiple of $6 on candy, unless that multiplier is zero.

Board Game Party

2010-10-19T00:22:00.001-05:00

It's been a while since I got to do any board gaming with my wife, and Saturday was the closest we got in a while.

After Cori's birthday party, we headed over to Chris and Marcie's place for some board gaming. I played Thunderstone (won), Roll Through The Ages (lost), 2 games of 10 Days in Africa (50-50), and 2 games of Dominion: Alchemy using a couple of the pre-set layouts (won both).

Lee was grading papers and didn't get a chance to play anything, but we all held baby Reese and that was good, too.

Today is back up your photos day, with footnotes and quantum Wilson

2010-10-10T11:30:00.004-05:00

I was copying over everything in the universe from my ailing PC, Wilson,* to a 160 gig USB hard drive.

Wilson has been rebooting at random** lately so I was copying all the stuff*** in the universe. Wilson rebooted, again. The files are gone**** from Wilson.

No problem, because the USB hard drive is... making a depressing, teeny-tiny clicking noise*****.

Fortunately, last Christmas, I got paranoid and burned to DVD 3 sets of the photos, and gave them to some folks to celebrate Jesus' birth.

That means I've only lost every single download I had in the universe, including board game files that are long-gone in the wild, all my music******, any software I hadn't moved to my alternate teeny-tiny USB backup, and miscellaneous******* files. Oh, yeah, and any alternate game design files that were in my current working set for 18IA et al., and all the photos and video that I put on the computer since mid-December 2009.

What's not lost? The board game designs I emailed to myself on Google as a backup, photos I posted on my blog, anything else I emailed to people with Google, and stuff I backed up on other weird computers around the house.

Today, imagine that your primary data store failed. The tower catches fire, the hard drive turns a lonely face to the blank wall, your laptop gets stolen by love-sick crackheads. It's gone, gone, gone, just like 5 years of my digital life.

I have failed as an IT professional. But not completely. That backup is the only reason I'm not going to take a toaster to the bathtub.

What I tell you three times is true: back it up in multiple copies offsite, back it up in multiple copies offsite, back it up in multiple copies offsite.

---------------

* the Beach Boy? House's foil? The blood-faced volleyball? They all work!

** not really random. It's a driver problem that involves something where I use the integrated sound features or tax the I/O in any way. I need to take heavy measures, but first I WAS BACKING UP MY FILES.

*** every photo Lee or I has ever taken, every video we've ever shot, all my own music, all my board game design files, all the collected downloads of the last 5+ years, etc.

**** gone like Gondwanaland (my own personal favorite reference), gone down the American river (q.v. Howl)

***** clicking means it is completely FUBAR.

****** only about 12 gig worth, I got sick of having it bloat last year and pared it down to the necessities, i.e. the Sneaker Pimps.

******* PDFs of every shape and size, comic book samples the creators released like Wizzywig, my favorite lolcats, etc. - ephemera that is painful to lose, but ultimately no huge loss to humanity.

Cori is perfect.

2010-10-07T10:57:00.003-05:00

Recent games

2010-10-06T11:19:00.000-05:00

I took Alex to the Houston Gamers on Saturday and we played Rack-O and Roll Through The Ages.

Other than that, I'm cleaning the house and reorganizing piles of games.

Mike Doyle, godspeed in your new journey

2010-10-03T07:21:00.002-05:00

I got excited when I saw a new post by Mike Doyle, but it turns out to be a fond farewell.

Let's unpack things a little, shall we? Doyle produced intricate, functional, gorgeous original and re-imagined board game art, both professionally and as a hobby.

Now he's fallen under the spell of Lego bricks. Mike, I wish you the best in your future endeavors, and know you'll have a lot of fun.

Welcome to the future

2010-09-21T20:04:00.002-05:00

I am posting this wirelessly on a newly-Ubuntu'd laptop. Spent the entire weekend trying to make a USB wireless dongle I bought at Fry's work in Debian, including muc h use of ndiswrapper et al.

Finally said to hell with it and installed Ubuntu. Works about the same as Debian, except I was able to get the FR-300 USB installed and working in about 4 hours.

There is a reason that my wireless key is a very complex phrase of profanity.

September is re-evaluate and retrench month

2010-09-17T10:17:00.002-05:00

September is more than half over, and I'm pondering what worked and what didn't:

The Great Miscellaneous Item Purge of August: Awesome, except for the huge number of items still not stowed fully. The girls' rooms and the downstairs are much less likely to be targets of huge, avoidable messes.

Having Daria in day care as needed: Awesomely flexible. Daria is also more likely to go to day care willingly.

The Reduction-Of-Red-40-Project: Awesome, definitely worth the effort.

Computer projects: Bleah. All over the place on this. Bought a little wireless keyboard for the downstairs media pc, and love it. Bought a new power supply for the upstairs media pc, and it didn't work... that means possibly dead motherboard including cpu and memory. Have been experimenting with Linux wireless, which is a huge pain in Debian. I need to try it in Ubuntu to see what's up for that distribution. Have a number of dead/dying computers that need triage decisions.

The Great Attention-Sucking Reduction Purge: I deleted 80% of the Facebook games I play and don't miss them.

Other thoughts: played Thunderstone x2 with Alex, Magic x3 with Tim, also Race For The Galaxy with Lee. Board game day with Troy et al., was Can't Stop and Puerto Rico x2, Board game day at Nich's was Pizarro & Company with Amy Pike et al., and an abstract prototype of Nich's with Kevin Nunn. Also Glory To Rome with Chris B.

Get Lamp is great

2010-09-11T21:26:00.003-05:00

So I've seen some of GET LAMP, a documentary by Jason Scott. It is excellent, and deserves a place of honor in every nerd's DVD collection. GET LAMP traces the history of a genre, and has shockingly-good subtitles.

Am I glad I bought it? Absolutely. More to come as I see more.

Owlcon 2011 - I'll be there

2010-09-06T07:38:00.003-05:00

OwlCon is the Rice University gaming convention. Next one is January 28-30, and I've registered to run games on Saturday, January 29th. I'll be doing an 18IA prototype playtest session, and also a spotlight on Houston designers session. Get in free for running only 2 four-hour slots, etc., etc.

Other than that, I introduced a group of church friends to Can't Stop and Puerto Rico (won twice, but an uphill battle).

In geek news, I took the girls to Fry's Electronics to return something I didn't need, and bought a little wireless keyboard/trackball combo. I love it so far. I also bought a power supply for a dead computer, and I spent some time yesterday swapping it out. Apprehension is holding me back from powering it up. Well, apprehension and the need for extension cables inside - I won't be able to close the case as-is. Am thinking of constructing a monstrosity.

Games over the past couple of weeks

2010-08-23T06:21:00.002-05:00

Okay, so that's about 15 games of Rack-O with Alex, 7 games of chess with Alex, 1 game of chess with Logan, a game of Roll Through The Ages with folks at the Meetup group (okay, it was Scott B., Mary, and Daniel), a game of Dominion and a game of Reiner Knizia's Money (by Reiner Knizia, etc.) with my brother-in-law and Tom and Chris and...

Alhambra with Lee (we beat Dirk).

Alternate Endings to Doctor Who's Latest Season (possible spoilers)

2010-08-11T18:36:00.002-05:00

Let's write some better endings to this season of Doctor Who!

1) Amy gets zapped by a 1968-Corvette-style fancy-paint-job Dalek in ep 10/11/12 and just dies, no questions asked. The Doctor mopes, but is cheered up by having to do something that's not stupid to stop the Pandorica. Doctor takes Amy's body back and drops it off by Rory's corpse. We briefly hear the Ol Yeller theme as the scene fades to black.

2) The Pandorica opens. Inside is (pick any): Davros. The Master. Another Rory. All the lost stuff that's been eaten by the crack in time. Van Gogh. Bart Simpson. (to quote Bart from a Treehouse of Horror episode: "Lis[a], you know what would have been scarier than nothing? ... Anything!"

3) The Pandorica opens. Inside is: a note, saying "Sorry, we boned this season, will pick it up again at Xmas," signed by Stephen Moffat. Fade to black. Title fades in, "Xmas 2010: Lady Gaga IS the Master."

4. The Pandorica grinds to a halt, failing to open. Daleks and Cybermen set to work with plungers and cyber-wrenches. The Doctor slips away in the confusion, possibly by whacking a Sontaran in the back of the head.

5. Marty McFly III. "Doc, you gotta help me!"

Rules of thumb

2010-08-11T16:21:00.002-05:00

1. If you're down by a rook and a queen, resign.

2. More than 2 windows system files dead in one chkdsk means you're probably dealing with a bad hard drive. The time to back files up is NOW, NOW, NOW.

3. The difference between someone who isn't curious and someone who is curious, at one time, used to be that they were about equal. Now Google has made that curiosity powerful:

August is Get-Your-S***-Together Month!

2010-08-03T09:43:00.003-05:00

Sometimes, you have to work out what the problem is:

Anyway, August is going to be one of those months for me. I've locked myself out of a couple of the online games I play, to focus on productivity.

Todd's Sweet Corn Recipe

2010-07-23T11:43:00.003-05:00

Todd's sweet corn: In buying sweet corn, presume one full ear per child and one full ear per city adult at the table, plus one ear as seconds per 4 adults. Allocate 3-4 ears per farming adult, growing teenager, or known gourmand.

Peel back the husk at least a third of the length of the ear to see the kernels. You are looking for full, rounded kernels that are even, and to be sure that each ear has fully propagated with kernels. Select ears that suit your temperament, bearing in mind that small kernels are sweeter, and large kernels are starchier. In the beginning of the season, try for the largest ears you can find; conversely, at the end of the season, look for smaller ears.

After you buy the freshest sweet corn you can find, cook as soon as possible, ideally never letting corn reach room temperature naturally. Husk and shuck right before cooking to prevent kernels from drying. As you husk, a natural twisting of the husks will also pull away most of the silks without allowing them direct contact to your hands. I prefer to remove as many silks as possible, but some will also be freed during the cooking; therefore, do not spend more than 5 minutes total on the entire batch, regardless of number of ears involved. Trim tops and bottoms of ears to be flat (to insert corn holders at the table after cooking) and snap in half.

If you find anything strange on the ears, cut it off and throw away, preserving as much corn as possible. Guests should never see you husk the corn, in case of various natural surprises which will clean up just fine, and besides, you're going to boil the heck out of it. (fungi and live caterpillar-like corn worms are the two most likely unwelcome revelations - most grocery stores will have culled these suspect ears, but you never know).

In the largest pot you own, bring to boil lots of pepper, 1/4 cup sliced mushrooms, a few random baby carrots, an entire clove of garlic broken up , splash of oil (your choice) to keep from boiling over, onion powder, a few cashews, vague hint of salt, moderate chili powder and paprika, and a few small potatoes if you have them. Add corn at rolling boil. Boil at rolling boil for a while.

Remove ears just prior to serving, and put corn holders or large nails in each end of the corn half-ears. Present guests with corn stacked on serving platter, which will maintain heat as best as possible. Salt and pepper shakers should be plentiful on the table, along with multiple butter dishes or corn dishes (plastic or ceramic dishes designed specifically for the application of butter to corn).

It is rude to salt or pepper a cob directly on a butter dish, but ruder still to presume malicious intent of the perpetrator. Second/third/fourth helpings should be divided evenly, as best as possible.

Corn cobs should be tossed over the fence for the cows to eat.

Comics that I love in spite of myself, also, on games

2010-07-21T13:49:00.003-05:00

Yeah, it's Warren Ellis again, this time with the full collection of Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E., possibly one of the funniest funny-books I've ever read.

In gaming notes, my good friend Len had a birthday and so I took nephew Mikey and daughter Alex to party with him. I gave him a Munchkin: Bobblehead Edition I picked up on clearance, and we also got in games of Power Grid (came in second to Len on a tiebreaker) and Glory To Rome (I scored 66 points, possibly my highest ever).

Len's about to get a master's degree in library science, and after that, we're going to play Goa, which we both love but have never managed to play at the same time.

Congratulations as well to Chris and Marcie Belfi on the birth of their daughter.

Everything is broken and terrible

2010-07-13T07:48:00.003-05:00

Lee's desktop PC is out of commission, and I'm going to have to either fix it, or move a printer to another computer to be able to print forms I need for a computer gig today.

If I remember correctly, the last time I moved the printer was to prevent jobs passed across the network from disrupting my games of "Majesty: The Northern Expansion."

Ah, for simpler days...

PS also played a ton of Roll Through The Ages and Dominion, including a few plays of Dominion: Alchemy. Other games: Ubongo x4, Glory To Rome, Power Grid: Factory Manager, and Phoenicia.

Purchased 1960 and Theophrastus via BGG, though they haven't arrived yet.

BGG will eat itself

2010-07-01T17:06:00.004-05:00

My internet buddy* Dave Lartigue, who's one of the forces of nature** behind the Bureau Chiefs and FakeAPStylebook, has a great post up at his site Dave Ex Machina, which I saw via my Facebook page. Being a giant bearded fat Facebook fail whale, I clicked on the "Like" button. Dave responded, rightly so, with, "LIKING IS NOT INPUT, TODD." and then the all-caps voice made me think he was Death from the Discworld novels, and then I must have blacked out, possibly due to the effects of seeing a bill from my endocrinologist's office.

Dave's post sparked a huge thread, which is no surprise.

* I once sent Dave some INWO cards he needed, presumably because his pancreas wasn't producing enough INWO cards.

** Like all Forces of Nature, each of the Bureau Chiefs is an 8/8 green trampler.

On losing my voice/on losing weight

2010-06-01T22:28:00.003-05:00

It's been a crazy few weeks around here since my last post. I almost got a job, and then I didn't. I helped a friend move to Conroe. I saw an old buddy who was in town from a long, long absence. I did some stuff around the house. I helped some folks with computer troubles, and that was fine and fun.

Lee and I had our 13th wedding anniversary, and that was cool. Alex graduated from kindergarten, and that was cool.

I have decided to be on the treadmill every day in June I possibly can, family trip excepted. I put in 50 minutes/540 calories on Monday, and 65 minutes/500 calories today.

I am tired of being at my current weight of 202 pounds, and want to be back around 180, maybe even 170 if I could manage it. It would be nice to get back to that dream state of "not having my feet hurt all the time."

Also, I'm going to donate blood sometime this week. I can do it, if Lee can get away from the census long enough for me to get to a donation point.

What I need

2010-05-01T08:45:00.003-05:00

After snapping some casual shots of the girls this morning, I reflected that what I need is a camera that automatically uploads all my pictures to various online targets, like my Gmail account, Flickr account, multiple email targets, and maybe a NAS/celestial jukebox.

There's probably an app for that.

On the state of the blog (games played summary)

2010-04-08T17:14:00.004-05:00

I figured an apology is in order since I last posted something February 12th. Sorry! Go about your business as though I've been posting regularly!

It has been an extraordinary time in our lives. Lee and I are still looking for teaching positions, both in Houston and beyond, with two job fairs last week, and the next two Saturdays already booked with job fairs as well. I am now qualified to teach both English (4-8 and 8-12) and Computer Science, by examination, and am assembling a beautiful binder of teacher-riffic materials.

During this time, I played about 30 games of Dominion, two games of San Juan, two games of Roll Through The Ages (lost 'em both), one game of Travel Blokus, and three games of Race for the Galaxy, uh, plus about a thousand hands of Texas Hold-Em online (yeah, I know, you thought I was a dedicated Euro-gamer, but it's a great implementation and a lot of fun).

I have been taking the girls on expeditions to the seamy underside of Houston - comic book shops, thrift stores, and pet stores. I found an independent pet store that actually allows you to lift the rabbits out of the bunny tank, which was a complete home run in entertaining the kids.

Alex is almost six, and pretty much understands how to play Dominion. She is reading well, and a lot of fun.

Cori is four-and-a-half, and pretty much like a pale, thin, wiry version of the Tasmanian Devil.

Daria is two, and was singing this song to herself in the car, "Put the egg in the baby/put the egg in the baby/put the egg in the baby's shirt," which I think is an excellent summary of America's foreign policy.

All three girls' favorite song is "Jesus Loves Me," which I find very comforting, myself, especially with all the extra lyrics: "Yes, Jesus loves Alex, yes, Jesus loves Cori, yes, Jesus loves Daria..." and then I start listing off everyone I can name. A few nights ago, Daria heard the names of every relative I could think of, and I started grasping at straws. "Jesus loves president Obama, yes, Jesus loves the vice-president..." and I made it to the Secretary of Agriculture before she fell asleep.

In the past two months, I re-read Alan Moore's Watchmen graphic novel, which is still excellent. I have been on the treadmill at the YMCA more. Other than that, business as usual in the job-hunting business.

Evan Dorkin stuff on ebay

2010-02-12T21:33:00.003-06:00

Evan Dorkin has some stuff listed on ebay. A shame he's having to sell off this stuff - there are some one-of-a-kind pieces here.

Dominion with Lee

2010-01-16T12:10:00.003-06:00

Lee and I have gotten in 3 games of Dominion this year so far. In the most interesting game, we did an odd setup with Gardens and no Mines or Festivals, and the game lasted quite a while. Lee beat me by a large margin, by outbuying me on Provinces.

The other two games were interesting because we used the two BGG promo cards, Envoy and Black Market. The Envoy is almost certainly undercosted, and I'm still trying to evaluate the Black Market.

Beyond that, I still haven't unwrapped the Seaside expansion.

Paying down the reading debt...

2010-01-07T09:22:00.002-06:00

Finally managed to get my Google Reader down under a thousand unread articles. This is possible only because I am a speed-reader. Found this gem on being a nerd dad, and being a grown-up.

Today we should get several of the teaching methods books from Amazon (also Dominion: Seaside). We also have a fascinating book on parenting that I've barely skimmed.

Blogs I read #1: The Blog Of Michael Mindes

2010-01-06T08:23:00.003-06:00

(This is the opening post of my new 2010 series of gaming blog reviews.)

Why are board game publishers so interesting? I'm friends with several. They're smarter than the average bear. They have a dream, and are following it. They tend to be high-energy, hard-working folks who have a broad range of disciplines at which they excel. They're self-starters and usually brimming with ideas. They have a critic's eye. With thousands of dollars invested in a high-risk, low-return business, they've got to be self-aware to succeed. Best of all, the vast majority of them understand that they're building a brand, and do their best to be friendly and nice.

Of course, you can't get far in the publishing business without being a half-decent editor and writer. All of this leads me to my next point:

Publisher Michael Mindes has a great gaming blog. Of all the gaming blogs I read, seeing a new post from Mindes is the surest way to start my morning with insightful, funny, and novel ideas on board game publishing. He's a Seth Godin advocate, which means Mindes cares about the way his message is received, and is in the world to build long-term value for everyone involved.

He's cranking out high-quality posts at an amazing rate, as well as giving away free games, in order to build himself and his company Tasty Minstrel games into a household name, at least in the Eurogaming world.

A confession: since I was laid off at the end of September, I haven't had any business buying new games, so my acquisitions have been meager and guilt-inducing. Thus, I haven't bought and played either of the Tasty Minstrel offerings yet. That last word is key. Both of his company's just-released games, Terra Prime and Homesteaders, are getting good reviews and commentary, and are on my to-try-soon list. I'm actively reading the buzz on them, and definitely am intrigued. Would I have gotten around to them without Mindes' blog? Maybe, and maybe not.

The only drawback to reading Mindes' work so far is that he's limiting his RSS feeds to not show everything, which is a major irritant for me. Thus far, he's publishing such interesting material that I still am willing to click through; of all the blogs I read, only about 3 get a pass on that.

Overall, The Blog of Michael Mindes is a fantastic study in how to promote games, with a clear understanding in switching up your message to appeal to as many facets of interest as possible.

The next post in this series will sing the praises of Brian Bankler's The Tao of Gaming, and after that, I'll wave my hands in an equivocal manner about Matt Drake's snappy Drake's Flames.

My (gaming) goals for 2010

2010-01-05T09:30:00.003-06:00

Figure out what my buddies want to play, and get 'em to the table! Chris B. found his old copy of Rail Baron, and Jonathan wants to learn Agricola. Kevin Nunn wants me to blind-test Rolling Freight, as well (2-3 hours as a 3, I think). I just gave my brother-in-law Dominion, so that'll be rockin' as well.
Move forward on 18IA, my train game, for a variety of reasons.
Play everything I am running at OwlCon at least once again before I go.
After OwlCon but before July 15, play everything I acquired last year, which is a scary lot of stuff, really. The Cattlemen, The Powerpuff Girls Game, Twilight Imperium, Acquire, Titan, Railroad Dice, Goa, the Dominion series, Duck Duck Safari, Bazaar, Gloria Mundi, Power Grid using the new plants deck, Havoc, and Renfield (did I already slip Renfield into a package going out of the house? I dunno, I get hit in the head a lot).
Re-write rules and complete prototypes for at least 2 of the other designs I have been nurturing. I have some sketches and they need to become playable so I can start hammering on them.
Put at least one game up on The Game Crafter by my birthday in October.
Write one gaming blog post a week, and review one gaming blog a month from my RSS feed.
Limit myself to buying only 6 games this year.
Do not participate in any Math Trades this year. Last year's set of trades got me a ton of stuff, for which I also worried way too much, procrastinated on sending, and spent way too much in postage.
Have fun.

Oh bother, where art thou?

2010-01-02T13:56:00.003-06:00

Seriously, I have only 2 New Year's Resolutions:

Find that one CD I can't find.
Find that one DVD I can't find.

Other than that, I'm still travel-trashed-out and will resume thinking in a couple of days.

Out of town gaming summary

2010-01-01T15:45:00.004-06:00

Florida: Roll Through The Ages x3, Dwarves and Dice x4, Beowulf: The Legend, Dominion, Puerto Rico, For Sale. North Carolina: Dwarves and Dice x 3.

All the girls really liked Dwarves & Dice, a cute little pattern recognition game where you roll 3 dice with different colors on them, and try to find the corresponding dwarf.

Watson Christmas report

2009-12-20T18:15:00.002-06:00

Lots of Loopin' Louie played with Alex, Cori, Logan, Wesley, and Michael. Played Dominion with Michael (I gave them a copy).

Other than gaming, we ate a lot of rotisserie chicken, drank wine, had cheese and crackers, watched Daria and Mikey interact, posed for photos, and had a grand time.

Played a ton of games today

2009-12-19T00:52:00.002-06:00

Robo Rally and Transamerica with my nephew Logan, then Race For The Galaxy, Duck Duck Safari, and Dominion later at the parents' night out with Lee.

How to tell I am getting old

2009-12-16T23:14:00.002-06:00

All I can think of when I see this picture is "what happened to her back?"

Christmas train still rolling along

2009-12-15T22:25:00.001-06:00

We went to Alex and Cori's ballet recital tonight. It was good, by which I mean short.

Fantasy Flight Games announces delay on War Of the Ring: Total Bling edition

2009-12-07T11:29:00.002-06:00

Fantasy Flight Games announced that their publisher won't make a shipping deadline to allow FFG to get the preorders out for War Of The Ring: Collector's Edition.

While always a tough call, kudos to the publisher for making it right, rather than shipping mediocre product, and kudos to FFG for handling it in a forthright manner.

Disclaimer: I bought games at Fantasy Flight Games' awesome clearance sale.

Other great Fantasy Flight Games I've played and recommend:

Blue Moon City
Blue Moon card game
Beowulf: The Legend
Arkham Horror
Cosmic Encounter
Twilight Imperium
Ingenious
Cave Troll

Scary-Go-Round

2009-12-03T23:28:00.000-06:00

Woot: Sketch Fiesta! I loves me some English webcomix.

Wednesday night gaming

2009-12-03T22:36:00.003-06:00

Whew. I introduced Lee to Dominion: Intrigue last night. She said, "There are too many choices!" I won by 3 points, but it was still close.

Other than that, meh, still working on "stuff and things and stuff," as we say around here. I did get the first mail-ordered Christmas presents in today.

Duck Duck Safari Pre-Order Offer - ends Nov 30

2009-11-28T13:52:00.001-06:00

Sweet! Order Duck Duck Safari by November 30 and get a free extra duck of your choice, plus 2 promo cards!

Thanksgiving wrap-up

2009-11-28T13:51:00.002-06:00

Went to La Grange for Thanksgiving. Successfully made a ton of sweet potato chips while Lee taught Michael and her mom Dominion. Also played: Can't Stop, and The Kids of Catan.

Things I Don't Give You Permission To Do, Vol 1: Use the Taser

2009-11-19T08:06:00.002-06:00

News article with commentary: 10-year-old girl tasered, with mom's permission.

As a kid, I had a few run-ins with electric fences used to keep cattle in, and I can report that being shocked sucks, sucks, sucks.

I remember once playing a game over at my friend Jim's house, and running full-tilt-boogie into a wire stretched about thigh-high. I was lucky that I hit it sideways and not straight on, but I can still remember the twin traumas of the shock and bouncing off the ground when I came away from the wire.

(In other gaming news, played Dominion with Lee a couple nights ago, played a modified Ticket To Ride with Alex, and played Dominion with Beth and Lee last night.)

Morning gaming with Alex: For Sale played as a 2 player

2009-11-03T09:42:00.003-06:00

Yesterday, Alex woke up and got dressed early for kindergarten, and wanted to look at For Sale (technically speaking, it supports 3-6 players). I removed 12 cards of each type and dealt us each $22, and we began to play. It's an auction game, and she was quick to overbid, using up all her cash.

She still won, 76-74.

Today we set up and played through about 3 turns of Blue Moon City. Alex is thrilled by the idea of calling dragons and finishing buildings.

I have already started to see holiday gift guides go up.

How to read bedtime stories to 3 girls (for fathers everywhere)

2009-11-03T09:12:00.004-06:00

You're going to need three little girls. I recommend conceiving them as closely spaced as you and your wife can manage. Remember, the sooner you're done, the sooner they can move out of the house. Assume the children are already all dressed for bed, with teeth brushed/flossed/fluorided. You may as well assume you've had two beers; you're about to earn them.

Select a book. This will require the patience of Job, as no two children wish to read the same book at the same time. They will shout suggestions and attempt to push past you to get to the bookshelves. If any books are in hand, they will be grabbed, and a shoving match will result. Mediate the argument by ruling in favor of the child who is being the calmest, in order that the child who is already agitated will become a tornado of anxiety and sobbing. Reassure her that her choice3 will be read next, although you secretly suspect that this will not happen.

Cautiously sit on the bed or on the couch, being careful not to expose your back to any child, lest you be climbed faster and more painfully than a fratboy's ladder at the Playboy Mansion. Guard your privates and open the book. This is the signal for all of your children to dive at your lap, in an effort to gain every iota of your precious love for themselves. If you are struck in the privates, gently admonish your children, using the comical nickname you have for your abused genitals. I call mine "the package," but you are free to select your own.

Once all of your love has been gathered and the three children are each seated on one leg, with no sharing (implementation left to the reader), begin reading. As bony elbows are driven into your ribs, announce the title of the book, substituting your favorite nonsense into it. Kick it up a notch to retain your sanity. My children delight at the stories of "The Three Little Weasels" and "Goldilocks and the Three Belt Sanders." If your children object, ask them who is reading the story, them or you? Be assertive, but recall that your middle daughter will shriek and dive from your lap to run across the room and hide in the alcove between her dresser and the closet at the slightest provocation.

When the story is finished, renege on your earlier commitment to read more stories, as daughter the youngest is already hair-pullingly exhausted and can't stop yanking the book from your hands. Take your youngest daughter to bed and as your older daughters kick the adjoining wall in frustration at your departure. Ensure it's dark enough that if your youngest flails at you with a stuffed giraffe, you will be struck in the nose.

Savor this time. She's too little to talk back.

Stone Age: I lost and I hate it;also, gaming at Michael and Maura's

2009-10-25T09:47:00.004-05:00

Larry and I carpooled over to Michael and Maura's place yesterday afternoon and got there around 4, and we got in some great gaming. Scott, "California" Doug, Larry, and I played Alhambra (I lost) and Goa (I won). Doug explained Stone Age while Michael finished up at the other table, and then I lost by about a zillion points at Stone Age. Larry had gotten up early to run cables in his attic, so we left about 11 or so.

Stone Age is an oddity, and I didn't like it at all, and not just because I lost. I had a huge, viscerally negative reaction, probably the strongest since my gut-churning hatred of Alexandros. Larry and I talked it over as we headed back, hopped up on soda and pizza, and discussing it helped express with words what I already felt.

Each player begins Stone Age with 5 cavemen, who are assigned each turn to perform such tasks as gathering food, getting resources via die-rolls, makin' babies, and doing Eurogamey stuff (converting resources into cards and/or converting resources into victory points). There are two ways the game can run out, making the game variable in length.

In theory, there's huge tension because you might not have enough food and might lose victory points for not being able to feed your cavemen. Larry tried a "starvation" strategy where he just placed his workers and took the victory point hit each turn, and ignored the resources-to-cards conversion track. Oh, and your "starved" workers aren't removed, they live to starve in the next round, and the next, and the next... Larry thus had free rein to place workers willy-nilly, where the rest of us either went up the food track a lot, or spent a lot of time wasting time collecting food.

As Larry pointed out, there's a huge set of unknown-unknowns: Are you going to roll to get enough resources? Is the game going to go fast or slow, and if so, what are these various victory point conversions worth? What's any placement really worth? How can I best block someone else, presuming they are in a position to grab a great victory point conversion? Are we there yet?

The start player gets to place workers first, and there are basically 3 excellent spots in the opening stages of the game, so if you're tail-end Charlie (and I was), you'll have to watch these spots be grabbed and take leftovers for 3 turns before getting to place first when the start player marker rotates around to you. The 3 spots are to create more workers, get a re-usable die-roll bonus, and permanently reduce your food upkeep cost. I loved the aspect of having limits and then having the limits eased, but again, there are 3 spots, and 4 people. If you're playing with other numbers of players, the occupancy limits are adjusted, so there's always an element of screwage that El Grande or Saint Petersburg players will enjoy (Saint Petersburg is also by Stone Age's designers, so it's no coincidence that player order figures so strongly in both).

In practice, unless you advance the food track or decide to adopt the "starvation" strategy, statistically, you need to devote about a third of your workers every turn, or all your workers every third turn, in order to get enough food to keep from starving. Again, as tail-end Charlie, I had to watch everyone else grab the food track 3 times prior to grabbing it for myself, at which point the player who advanced food first had also gotten an extra food advance from a card. In theory, this evens out, but in actual practice, it didn't, due to the speed at which the game ended.

The resources-to-cards set of cards use a waterfall cost method, so we had 4 cards out each round, costing 1, 2, 3, and 4 resources. In theory, as tail-end Charlie, you'll have a better chance at getting the cards you want, so it all works out. In actual practice, the cards are wildly variable in effect and value, so the fluctuating costs are simply another method for making player order frustrating. There's a ton of good, interesting things to do on every turn, and in practice, you're able to interact with very few of them. In some games, AP would lock players up, but the fact that there's only so much calculation you can do means players pretty much place and hope. There are strong opportunities to block, but again, you may not have enough cavemen to waste, just to be spiteful. All of this sounds great, but in practice, it's a giant dog's breakfast of icons, shopping for victory points, potentially-starving cavemen, and bitter regret. If you know anything about probability, it's better to clump up the cavemen than gamble them on single resource spots, so it was rare to see anyone place cavemen on more than one resource spot unless their tribe was going to starve.

So, if you're following this, it's Saint Petersburg (a shopping game where turn order is a total bummer)+Aladdin's Dragons (worker placement plus converting wildly-variable resources to varied victory points)+Agricola (worker placement and blocking plus brutal need for food)+ Caylus (worker placement and conversion of resources plus variable game length), minus fun. Some of you may recall this rant about turn order in Puerto Rico; Stone Age evokes that same frustration. The game length is wildly variable depending on which huts (resources-to-vp conversions) come up, and in what order, and based on players' whims. Spendthrift players can speed up the game significantly. Much like in Aladdin's Dragons, a player who wants to win must be pursuing resources-to-victory points conversions from the beginning, by finding bargains and opportunities.

After all my complaints, I'd still be willing to play Stone Age again, just to see if having two newbies threw the game out of whack. Rest assured, I won't play as the last player of a 4-player game next time I try it.

Design Considerations: What do these boards give you?

2009-10-21T13:18:00.002-05:00

Today's design thought to mull over: The Game Crafter's boards are super inexpensive to put in your game box. What can you do with a flat piece of cardboard (0r 4)? It can be a player mat, a player aid, a communal score sheet, an open market, an auction house, a map unto itself, a portion of a "map" (like in Reiner Knizia's Lord of the Rings), or a character sheet. What if you stacked the boards on top of each other? What if you rearrange how they appear in relation to each other? What about using single cards on a board to show various statuses or input-output relationships? Is there room for stacks of cards on or near your boards? How big a table can your game cover? What's the most fun you can put into a small physical space?

Recent Gaming

2009-10-21T12:59:00.003-05:00

Went to Kevin's and played Dominion: Intrigue last Tuesday.
Played Transamerica with Alex last Tuesday and Wednesday in the morning before school. She is 5 and hasn't gotten the "most efficient route" idea, but loves the idea of finishing them and connecting the cities.
Larry came over on Saturday and he, Lee, and I played 2 games of Dominion.

John Scalzi makes a case for Chewbacca

2009-10-16T09:58:00.003-05:00

A compelling case for why Chewie's the best sidekick ever.

Birthday activities

2009-10-13T16:34:00.002-05:00

Learned 3 of my submissions to a recent math trade went through on BGG, so I need to get them packed up. Shipping stuff I don't want, getting For Sale, Kids of Catan, and some MtG cards.
Filed first unemployment request ever.
Dropped off official transcript and got more Texas teacher certification tests approved for me to take in the upcoming weeks.
Burned some DVDs to be able to delete stuff on my hard drive.
Opened the mail to find candy-coated sunflower seeds and some cards! Cool.
Played around with game components over at The Game Crafters.
Drank 2 beers.

Meet the Elements: TMBG live

2009-10-07T13:06:00.001-05:00

They Might Be Giants on Jimmy Fallon to promote their new album/DVD, which we already own.

Hardcore Ludography is dead

2009-10-07T13:01:00.005-05:00

Seriously, you guys, could you at least have posted an "hey, on indefinite hiatus" notice?

That sucks. Don't just throw all those posts away.

Since Hardcore Ludography is dead, here's what I would have posted there, if I were a member of Hardcore Ludography:

Clown Car Syndrome

So you're getting together at your local board game night, and it happens that there are 11 people there. If your group's like mine, here's what happens:

1. It is presumed that everyone is willing to play anything, unless otherwise brutally known. This is completely fair, since my group spans a large section of Houston, and everyone's minute preferences can't be memorized, beyond "Todd hates trick-taking games" or "Michael hates Cranium."

2. It is presumed that bigger is better.

3. As a corollary to #2, it is presumed that games are best when maxed out at their absolute highest player count, possibly even including one more player if the physical room at the table is there.

I'm moderately fine with #1, but #2 and #3 are fighting words to me. I think most games have a sweet spot at about (max players -1), and beyond that number, you're only increasing the annoyance level for everyone. More players means more opportunity for downtime, lack of control, and overall lowered fun.

In the example above with 11 players, it will be presumed that a 6-5 split is optimal, and that a 6-player game and a 5-player game are ideal. The idea of breaking into a 3-3-3-2 split is anathema. (Do I get any points here for pointing out Ray Mulford's Anathema? He's in my gaming group so it seems like I should.)

Games that immediately leap to mind: Merchant of Venus, El Grande, Duel of Ages, Settlers of Catan, Puerto Rico, Unexploded Cow, and Shadows over Camelot. The first and last are huge mistakes, but for very different reasons. Merchant of Venus actually shines as a 2- or 3- player game, and adding more people only increases the downtime, but Shadows over Camelot sucks and should never be played, so adding more people only increases the pain.

Games where adding more players may-or-may-not-work: Apples to Apples, 6 Nimmt/Category 5, Nuclear War, Werewolf/Mafia, and poker. All these are party games, and nightmarishly group-dependent in any case, but can be expanded out quite a bit, since the action in the first two is simultaneous, Nuclear War works out quite nicely ("You, blue shirt dude. Lose 25 pop!), Werewolf scales if you've got access to additional special roles, and poker is heavily skill-dependent.

Maybe I've been a tremendous coward all these years, for not attempting to push forward a 3-player Merchant of Venus game at every session, but the collective groupthink in favor of condensing tables is extremely strong.

Not enough time in the day

2009-10-06T22:12:00.003-05:00

Without a job, I haven't been able to keep up with all the stuff in my RSS reader. Managed to read and clear out about a hundred items, have 285 to go.

Today I did manage to wake up under my own power in the morning, get Alex to school while Lee dropped off the others, went to the gym, ate Chinese food for lunch, and took a nap.

I swear, I have game-related blog posts in the works, including a top-100 list inspired by Chris Norwood's list.

Tim Scala Bim, also thrifting recap

2009-10-02T22:33:00.002-05:00

Tim came over and he, Lee, and I played Roll Through The Ages.

Thrifting in the last week:
Bought Mousetrap, Bazaar, a beat-up Careers, and a Ravensburger game with only the board in it.
Skipped The Inventors, Zathura, and two copies of Risk, plus a ton of other non-notable usual thrift store garbage.

I gave the Ravensburger box to Alex, and she immediately concluded that it was about racing trains (since I had just got a copy of Railroad Dice). She asked me to make some player markers shaped like trains, which I did. She's still working on all the rules. You roll the dice, and either go forward, get passengers (which does nothing), or draw map tiles (which does nothing).

We are filling out the gifted and talented program application for her.

Single Use Websites: I love them!

2009-10-02T08:04:00.002-05:00

http://www.howmanypeopleareinspacerightnow.com/

Other than that, I did manage to get to the Houston Gamers last weekend and played Glory to Rome (x2), Endeavor, and Roll Through The Ages.

Tim came over last Sunday and we cracked the shrink on Dominion and my copy of Roll Through The Ages. Didn't get around to playing any Magic, but still a great time.

Miscellaneous notes

2009-09-02T23:09:00.003-05:00

Race For The Galaxy is not wine-proof, merely wine-resistant.
Just because you buy a game, doesn't mean you'll play it. Ever.
There's no substitute for fun.

Kingdom of Loathing: I continue to play and enjoy this game.

2009-08-16T06:30:00.004-05:00

I continue to play the free browser-based Kingdom of Loathing game, and I think if you click on this screenshot to see the full image, you'll see why:

Beyond the humor, there is a depth of gameplay and wealth of options that make it an engaging and enjoyable experience that has kept me amused for almost 3 years now.

Test post:: Is this viewable on Facebook?

2009-08-15T22:47:00.006-05:00

Also are my ex-coworkers' cousins' friends' dogs' virtual Mafia okay? Facebook wants me to know and care about them.

Facebook is, as a webpage, the Opposite Of Google. It's soothing to look at Google's homepage, which is like a pebble that's a perfect sphere, shaped by a million years in a rock tumbler perfected by a hive mind of computer geniuses that only work on beautiful and useful . Seeing Facebook for the first time is like having a thousand ducks peck you to death and then killer bees come along and sting your corpse in and around the buttock region.

Facebook also reminds me of what some guy on the internet (okay, it was Giles Bowkett) once wrote about "the Cory Doctorow problem." See, Cory Doctorow's a brilliant guy who also has a Giant Nostalgic Boner For The Entire Disneyland Experience, so much so that he wrote a book about it, also another book I really didn't like (Little Brother) that almost won a Hugo this year. Bowkett wants Doctorow's brilliance but not the GNBftEDE. [I also think that Zoe's Tale, another nominee, will have a lot more significance in ten years than Little Brother, but that's beside the point.] I want the Facebook connections, yet I want the entire thing to be reskinned and remixed to not be garish, disjointed, and needy.

In short, I want to not feel about Facebook like the guys in Penny Arcade feel about the Microsoft Store.

PS Firefox crashed 8 times during the creation of this post.

Cori's gun at Easter

2009-07-15T08:22:00.002-05:00

"This is my gun. It shoots fire and dust and smoke. The smoke goes in the bad guys' eyes, and they die."

She looks like a real soldier.

Dave Lartigue wants single-payer health care

2009-07-15T08:21:00.002-05:00

Dave Lartigue wants single-payer health care. So do I.

Elizabeth Grigg nails it in one.

2009-06-13T17:09:00.000-05:00

Here:

The true status of an "80% done" claim: "I have just turned my massive intellect to this task"

As someone in the IT field, this is generally true.

Gaming with my wife

2009-06-06T09:13:00.003-05:00

Lee's an amazing woman who has tried a vast number of the boardgames and card games in my collection. Recently we've been getting some gaming on Wednesday evenings up at the church while the girls are in free child care. In the last 3 weeks, we've played as follows:

San Juan - an old standby for us. We can burn through a game quickly and easily and still have a conversation during play. At the same time, we're still enjoying it. If a fire destroyed my game collection today, I'd buy a replacement copy of San Juan tomorrow.

Pandemic - Lee hadn't tried this one yet, and I've been working toward getting this on the table for about 2 months. We played the introductory scenario with open hands using the Dispatcher and Researcher roles, and won quite easily. The whole thing didn't gel as a game experience for her. My rating for Pandemic is dropping as it is starting to feel a little scripted; it also doesn't help that I keep being the most experienced player at a table of newbies. I am going to put my copy in a Math Trade on BGG and see what happens - if it trades for something I really want, fine, if not, no loss.

Race For The Galaxy - I recently acquired this and the expansion in a trade brokered through Boardgamegeek, which was a big score for me. I'm a huge Tom Lehmann fan (and since he co-designed San Juan, Lee's sort of one as well) and have enjoyed RftG on 2 other occasions. This was a no-brainer to pick up; the fact that I got the expansion in the trade as well was an awesome bonus. For those of you wondering, I traded off Cuba, which I bought from RJ for $5. Even figuring in postage, this was a definite win.

In any case, Lee did a great job learning the game, which definitely is two levels more complex than San Juan. I had the most trouble with explaining the Consume power, because Lee's tableau was such that we didn't pick the role until both of us had 2 planets with Consume powers, and when we did fire it, we picked Consume-Trade and Consume-x2 VP at the same time. She did have a handle on it by the end of the game, and even won. She said she wasn't sure if the extra complexity was worth it, but would play again. Overall, it was a lot of fun.

BONUS ADDITIONAL CONTENT: Wow, there is a lot of air inside the admittedly-already-small Race for the Galaxy:The Gathering Storm expansion box. It's got two special dice, a double-sided placard used for different things, some cardboard victory point squares, and a small deck of cards. Oh, and the rules. Glad I got this in a trade or I'm uncertain I would have gone for it. Guess it would depend on how much Racing for that particular Galaxy we had already been doing. I also haven't cracked open the deck of cards yet to see what awesomeness lies within. I may throw this into the Math Trade on BGG as well and see if I can trade up with it.

Clever and creepy

2009-06-05T08:19:00.001-05:00

This site has a CSS hack that shows how trivial it is to figure out what websites you've visited recently. Not sure what to think about that one.

State of the Todd: Video Games

2009-06-02T21:57:00.003-05:00

I quit playing Evony (formerly Civony) and Space Project last Monday. Both of them, ultimately, didn't have any interesting stories to tell me. Cold turkey, walked away from the accounts. That probably means my Evony Princedom is getting rolled over by 12-year-olds with grudges. Sample in-game communication: "Wy R U attakin me? We R not enimeis?" Yes, yes, we are.

Still playing Kingdom of Loathing. I have a couple pairs of Stainless Steel Pants, if that tells you anything.

Gemcraft Chapter 0 is crazy-hard. I was good at the original, too; this is much more difficult.

Alex's rats

2009-06-02T21:45:00.002-05:00

I was putting Cori and Alex to bed when Alex began to tell me about the rats in her room.

ALEX: There are little rats in my room. (She makes little scurrying motions with her hands.)
ME: Oh, in the walls.
ALEX: No, they're little. They're tiny.
ME: (puzzled) Okay.
ALEX: They're so little you can't see them. They're like mice. In the carpet.
ME: Mites! You have dust mites!
ALEX: Yeah.

Bleah.

2009-06-01T22:52:00.000-05:00

Been feeling out of it all day, and now BGG is down.

Cashflow 101: Who is bootlegging it, and why?

2009-05-26T16:10:00.002-05:00

I've been perusing Ebay* auctions for Cashflow 101, because I'm fascinated by the high prices it commands, and there's lots of boilerplate text obviously copy-pasted into them about the need to make sure you get a copy with the special pencils that are the proof you've got a genuine copy of the game.

Seriously, who the hell is making pirated copies of it? Even knowing that a copy of the game is ~$100 on Ebay, why would you go to the nightmarish effort of bootlegging it?

The only reasonable scenarios I can think of: 1. Whatever overseas printer is making copies of the game decided, on a whim, to print up a few thousand extra, and they "fell off the truck" in Singapore or whatever. 2. A bunch of copies "fell off the truck" right in sunny California and they're loose on the market. 3. Kiyosaki had some sort of dispute somewhere with someone doing a mass purchase of games, and that led to adding the pencils as a proof-of-authenticity claim.

Anyone know the story behind this? I find it doubly-ironic since pencils are pretty darn easy to make, compared to entire boardgames.

Yes, I already know about people counterfeiting individual Magic cards, which makes sense since the Power 9 will run you a few grand, and it's a lot less work than an entire boardgame. I am also aware that people "broke" the Eye of Judgment videogame/collectible card game using high-quality printed scans to fool the scanner into thinking they had all the rare cards.

Miscellaneous link

2009-05-22T10:55:00.005-05:00

A fellow BGGer shares a couple of pictures of his daughter on his blog. The two pictures are identical except the time when the shots were taken.

Speaking of pictures, all our digital camera batteries are dead, and I need to buy more.