Friends
Jul. 5th, 2009
09:58 pm - Games, the normal Kind
So, this has been a really fantastic stretch for me for board and card games, and I figured I'd run through the goodness.
Race for the Galaxy continues to be our go-to game. I have lost track of how many times we've played. The two player game holds up really quite well, but playing with my wife is a welcome pleasure, and the wife-friendliness really helps take the game up to the next level.
Dominion has fallen by the wayside, only because Race is just that much fun. That said, I'm really optimistic that the expansion's going to add that little extra bit of awesome to the game.
San Juan - I picked this up when I found the game store in Savage Mill. I'd heard that it had a lot of similarities to Race for the Galaxy, so I'd been pondering it for a while. We played it, and my impression is that is feels like a greatly simplified version of RftG, with most of the complexity pared down. Early games ran headlong into the Guildhall - a card that seems greatly out of balance with the others in the game. I went and checked the web afterwards and fans of the game assert that the Guildhall is balanced, and that it's beatable. We played some more, and we tested some of these theories, but they most seemed to play out as "The guildhall is not overbalancing if players squelch it by hanging onto it or burying it in a chapel or the like." That's not entirely satisfying, and the shadow of it kind of loomed over play. All in all it was fun, but much less fun than Race, so it will probably fall by the wayside.
Shadows Over Camelot: Merlin's Company - Shadows is an old favorite, and we finally got to try it with the new expansion. In a word, wow. The new knights are fun, the addition of Merlin adds an interesting element, but the really fantastic parts are all in terms of making it harder. The new black cards are a ton of fun, and the addition of the hazards of moving really ratcheted up the tension. I think that game was the most nail-biting one we've played, and pulling it out really felt like victory. It is unfortunate that Shadows tends to take so long to play that we don't play it very often.
Wits and Wagers - Holy crud this is a fantastic game. We've always liked their other game, Say Anything, which is a little bit more of a social game. Instead, W&W is a trivia game, but one which I described as one that my mom and dad could play together. It plays quickly and while there are a few points to be gotten for answering questions correct, but the bulk of points come from betting on other people's answers. This one's going to float to the stack next time there's a call for a social game.
Pandemic - Despite the awesomeness of Merlin's Company, there's a good chance that this one is goign to take over the spot formerly held by Shadows. Like Shadows, it is a cooperative whack-a-mole game. Unlike Shadows, it plays lightning fast, and we played easily four or five sessions in one night. Some of that speed comes from a little bit of simplification, but that's offset by the less-structured nature of the challenge which makes the whole thing a bit more organic. More notably, we got whupped. First game played we won by a huge margin, and that was the only one we got. We proceeded to get beaten up and down the map for the next two nights. But it was the kind of losing that makes us more eager to play, not less. I have an impression that there are some better and worse combinations of the role cards (which dictate special abilities) but unlike the Guildhall in San Juan, I am comfortable accepting that there's more subtlety to be revealed.
For all that play, there are also a few more games coming down the pike I'm looking forward to.
Small World - This is Days of Wonder's new wargame, and it's on a UPS truck as we speak. The promise is that is will scratch the wargame itch in about an hour of play.
Dominion: Intrigue - The Dominion expansion, which I'm mostly worried is going to create storage problems, but which otherwise looks promising.
Revolution - Just want to shake my fist at ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
philreed because he has me chomping at the bit for this.
09:04 pm - DC Peeps: Go-go
DC peeps, inform the wider world about go-go.
Thank you.
08:05 pm - Garden War
Creeping Thistle, (Cirsium arvense) is a noxious thing that has invaded my pool side garden. The flowers aren't attractive enough to make up for the stringy, gangly plants or the ratty, mangey looking fluff when it goes to seed. I let a few bloom, just to see what happened, but they didn't even attract butterflies.
The website where I first looked it up described it as "pernicious" and while it doesn't pose the same threat poison ivy might, the thorns are wicked. Individual battles to weed it out seem to be failing as a tactic so I may have to rip out and kill a whole section of the garden to get rid of it. Not a huge loss, I'm not fond of the weedy looking shrubs that are growing there, and the azalea that are there look sad and the blooms cook in the sun every spring, so moving them would be a good idea anyway.
Just wish it wasn't going to be so much work. :-p
07:46 pm - Very Quick Mini-Update for Holiday Weekend
A longer Long Holiday Weekend Update will appear REAL SOON NOW.
This short burst is aimed at any music/performance-based peeps (specifically, I am looking at you, ego_likeness and ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small}
earowe, but all are welcome):
Christylez Bacon
I was VERY impressed at the Folklife Festival with his ability to fuse hip-hop, poetry, beatboxing, and the DC experience, in a catchy and singable way.
Check this guy out:
http://www.christylez.com
http://www.twitter.com/ChristylezBacon
http://www.youtube.com/christylezbacon
He has CDs available, check 'em out!
(I REALLY want to see what sort of musical love that Ego Likeness and Chris/TriFlava could produce. The artistic and genre interactions would be GOLD.)
I know I will be looking for his solo nights as well as his band, TriFlava, from now on.
Check it out.
04:52 pm - Picnicon XI
So, I went to Picnicon XI, the annual Independent's Day get together of the the Boston Gamers listserve. It started on Friday, but I was at home playing bridge with my family that day, so I went in on Saturday. I wasn't sure if I was going to go, since it was the first Saturday in quite a while I wasn't needed anywhere.
Ended up playing:
Zombie Fluxx
Race for the Galaxy
It Came From the Late, Late, Late Show
and a bit of D&D (not 3rd of 4th ed, or even AD&D, but D&D. Although I'm not sure it was PURE old school, but I could be wrong.)
and listened to a session of Baron Munchaussen.
It was fun, and met some new people.
10:05 am - Ewen, in case you missed it
Totally Moe fighting game, free, built (surprisingly well) on the 2D Fighter Tsuku-ru series (2001 edition!) from Enterbrain!
Information, clip and DL link from Kotaku:
http://kotaku.com/5306881/cute-figh
Jul. 4th, 2009
10:31 am - the most beautiful arcade game: the BattleTech pods
What: The fully enclosed BattleMech cockpits used in futuristic multiplayer combat in Virtual World Entertainment's BattleTech Centers. A 'Mech pod features a huge viewscreen, a virtual map, a throttle, a joystick for firing a dozen weapons, movement pedals, heat sensors, and other bells and whistles. Here is a demonstration of a 'Mech in action:
Why: Inherent in the definition of "arcade" is the sense of variety from one machine or attraction to the next. Not so in the BattleTech Centers, such as the flagship center in Chicago's North Pier. Here you'd just find row after row of pilot cockpits for 30-foot-tall exoskeletal tanks. You'd shut the door, lock in, and familiarize yourself with your BattleMech. And a whole lot of other people would too. Suddenly, you were fully immersed in 33rd century combat, blasting away at your enemies with rockets and lasers. The 'Mechs were all different, and you'd vary your play style based on whether you were in an agile Blackhawk or a lumbering Atlas. The pods' greatest innovation was a concept called "heat," where continuous firing of your weapons would not only deplete their ammunition, but burn out your 'Mech's systems as well. So you had to cool down, play smart, and watch your six.
Impact: Launched in 1990, the pods drew gamers from everywhere. A second game, the Martian sled racer Red Planet, debuted in the pods, here shown off by Judge Reinhold, Joan Severance, Nora Dunn, Cheech Marin, and Weird Al. It's overstating things to say that the BattleTech Centers revolutionized arcade gaming, but they were the most ambitious virtual environments of their day. In the 1990s, there were 26 centers across the world, each with at least 12 pods. But by 2000 the main centers in Tokyo and Yokohama shut down, and Dave & Buster's closed its pod installations in the US. The VWE company passed to BattleTech originators FASA, then Microsoft, and now to an operation in Kalamazoo, which supports centers in a few US states. It's a modest old age for one of the greatest videogame systems of all time.
Personal Connection: BattleTech co-creator Jordan Weisman and I have been friends for 15 years, working together on the BattleTech Trading Card Game in the 1990s and Pirates of the Spanish Main earlier this decade. At Origins this past weekend, we did something we'd never done before: face each other in a 'Mech pod battle. None of us were very good. While I stumbled about in my 85-ton Deimos, Jordan's son Nate flew circles around us in the much nimbler Shadowcat. By the end we'd actually killed ourselves as often as we'd killed each other, but a splendid time was had by one and all. (Thanks to MechCorps for comping us. You guys rule.)
Other Contenders: that game's spiritual godfather BattleZone, where green wireframe tanks bore down on you like death; the Guns 'N Roses pinball machine, with its gun and rose-shaped plungers, snake ramp, and head-banging soundtrack; the gorgeous Don Bluth-animated Dragon's Lair cabinet game, and yes, those are gameplay sequences from 1983; Acclaim's summoning game prototype Magic: The Gathering—Armageddon, the coolest arcade game never produced; the dual-pad Dance Dance Revolution, the only exercise many gamers get; the quest for that perfect game of skee-ball.
07:39 am - Dream: Arcane Agent
I loved the dream I had last night. It would make an interesting novel, or a RPG setting.
( Read more... )
12:11 am - Pick-up virtual tabletop D&D: more info
People interested in playing my
pick-up D&D4e virtual
tabletop game, whether on a semi-regular basis or every once in a while,
please check out the
Campaign Wiki, and
join the hat_campaign community. Character concept ideas
should go there, along with other discussions, and I'll post game
notices and whatnot there rather than in my regular LiveJournal,
so as to not create clutter in my personal LJ.
Jul. 3rd, 2009
10:19 am - [Vox] Dammit, here we go again!
Just spent last night reading the introductory scenario to Vox. It's got the surreal in spades, plus the intro scenario ALSO determines initial character generation.
So, yet another game to talk on and on about, like I do with Hellas? Oh yes, I do believe so. I'm *really* liking what I see sofar. The only strange thing is that there's a real tight separation between the GM and Players' sections, yet the Player's section has lots of GM-ish spoilery stuff in it, like the entirety of the introductory scenario.
Still, I think I'm going to run this, soon. Shane is going to be busy in July (well, me too) so the epic Hellas game I've got on deck will be pushed back a few weeks anyway. We'll see how fast I can wrap up the rest of the Tenra text first.
IMO, and from what I've seen of it thus far, Vox is incredible. Well-written, extremely interesting and compelling, and one of the first games of surreality that seemed to Get It Right. Only problem is that, unlike other small press stuff that people reading this are aware of (Do, S7S, Mythender, Psi Run and so on) Mike F kinda designed it in a Vacuum; he posted updates on his blog about release dates and samples and stuff, but didn't blog along about it openly. On one hand, this means that he finished it much more quickly: Instead of Talking about Writing the Game, he simply Wrote the Game. But, it also means that when it was released, it was released into essentially a vacuum. No one knows anything about this game. If I didn't share a booth with Mike last year at GenCon, *I* wouldn't have known anything about it.
Anyway, if you like surreal games, or the concept behind the oWoD Wraith ("Someone else at the table plays the voice in your head"), check this game out.
I'll have more info once I've read through it more, then more once I've played it.
-Andy
09:16 am - [s7s] Hm.
Is it me, or is it strange that there are no reviews of Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies on RPGNow or DriveThruRPG?
07:27 am - Recitation of Declaration of Independence on NPR
Give a listen.
Stirring, patriotic, and made of win.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor
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Declaration of Independence Declaration of Independence |
06:12 am - An Ant empire the Romans or Genghis Khan might envy
http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_ne
http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_new
A single mega-colony of ants has colonised much of the world, scientists have discovered.
Argentine ants living in vast numbers across Europe, the US and Japan belong to the same inter-related colony, and will refuse to fight one another.
The colony may be the largest of its type ever known for any insect species, and could rival humans in the scale of its world domination.
While ants are usually highly territorial, those living within each super-colony are tolerant of one another, even if they live tens or hundreds of kilometres apart. Each super-colony, however, was thought to be quite distinct.
And according to the article, its probably the fault of humans, for carrying sub colonies of the original population throughout the world.
Genghis Khan, Augustus Ceasar and other potentates in history can only envy the extent that this ant colony has managed to spread across the world.
05:52 am - Too long...
It's been too long since I've worked out regularly. Got myself on the exercise bike at the fitness center this morning.
Damn, but it felt good.
Jul. 2nd, 2009
09:50 pm - Brief Update
This past weekend, my youngest brother Brian got married, tying the knot with his college sweetheart, and thus taking the last of the unsecured Lynch boys off the market.
Also, this past Friday, as the family was embarking on its mass road trip to the wedding, my paternal grandfather Martin died at home at the age of 81, following a long battle with cancer.
I will, unfortunately, not be attending Convergence 2009, where I had been scheduled to sit on a panel on Friday, July 3rd.
01:32 pm - If John Bolton is going to be our new Cato...
Former UN ambassador John Bolton seems to have a preoccupation with bombing a certain Middle Eastern Country.
According to Joe Klein on the link above, he's argued for bombing Iran three times in the last month. (By us and/or Israel)
Mr. Bolton, some advice. You should at least learn to say it in the original Latin if you are going to be our new Cato (who, as a Roman senator, advocated, in every speech he gave for years, going to war with Carthage)
"Iran Delenda Est"
10:33 am - She Knows Where the Treats Are
She Knows Where the Treats Are
I've got to start hiding treats everywhere, all over the house. I started this process years ago, but she's figured it out. I've got to find new, and more numerous hiding spots. Underestimating Marley's intelligence--particularly when it comes to food--is always a losing strategy.
See, here's the thing. She knows where the treats are. So rather than having learned "sometimes when Monte gives me a command, I get a treat," she's learned, "when Monte is in certain places in the house and gives me a command, I get a treat." So my commands carry a lot of weight in some places, and virtually none in others.
So from now on, I've got to have a treat within reach from just about everywhere. She's got to learn that there could be a treat at any moment, in any place, as a reward for good behavior. (The key to training isn't the reward, it's the possibility of a reward.)
Did I mention that Corgis--even by dog standards--are wildly food oriented? Oh man. If suddenly Corgis weren't food oriented, and they focused their intelligence on other things, we humans might be in trouble.
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