You don’t have know indie music to appreciate Phonogram

Until earlier this week as of my writing this, I had never heard of the comic book Phonogram until I saw a clickbait article saying it was one of the all time greats of comic book-dom. So I found a copy of the first volume and read it.

Summary: It isn’t some forgotten V for Vendetta but it is a solid, even thoughtful read. In fact, Phonogram is one more (of oh so many) arguments that comic books are literature, not mindless gloop.

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In the world of Phonogram, phonomancers are magic users who use music to reinforce or change their identities, how people see them, things like that. In other words, pretty much what people do in the real world. And, indeed, it is set in the ‘real’ world and real music is so imbedded in it that there are extensive annotations for someone like me who just likes to listen to music and not be an authority on it.

The first volume, Rue Britannia, is about phonomancer David Kohl looking into a group of retro fans trying to resurrect the patron goddess of Brittpop. And, if you are like me, you’ll need to look up that it was a mid-90s indie movement and that you do know some of the bands.

The actual underlining plot, while it involves undead goddesses and cultists, is David realizing what a shallow, pretentious little git he is. And, by the end, he is still a pretentious jerk but he’s gained some awareness and empathy.

And Phonogram also has something to say about music. Or, really, our relationship to music. That a song can be shallow or objectively terrible but still meaningful to us. And that’s okay. That the music we listened to when we were nineteen will always be the best music. (Don’t actually agree with that but I understand the idea)

Hellblazer was clearly a major influence on at least the first volume of Phanogram. David Kohl and the Garth Ennis-flavor of John Constantine have a lot in common. Some of David’s lines I would have been right at home in one of Ennis’s scripts. But since it is a self-contained story, David is allowed to actually grow.

After reading Rue Britannia, the second volume, The Singles Club, considered to be the best of the three volumes, is on my shortlist to read.

I can’t quit Paper Pinball

I recently played Paper Pinball - Ski ‘93 for the first time. I can’t really say that I learned it because every game in the Paper Pinball series follows the same basic formula. Roll two to three dice and fill in a blank.

I actually own every board except the Advent Calendar set but I save learning new boards for when life is so crazy that I can’t fit in anything more complex. So I’m happy that it’s been a couple years since I’ve learned a new board.

 

Which isn’t to say I haven’t been playing Paper Pinball. It isn’t something that I play every day or even every week but the system does have a way of coming back out. And I play a lot of Roll and Write games so even doing that much counts as praise.

Paper Pinball is a very bare bones approach to both pinball and Roll and Write. As I already said, it’s really just roll dice and write down numbers. In fact, when I first played it, I really wasn’t impressed at all. 

However, there actually is some theming in the game, something I wasn’t convinced of to start with. The boards have artwork that definitely evokes pinball machine art. And some elements, like ramps requiring ascending numbers, are thematic.

As the series progressed, I feel that both the theming and mechanics tightened up. Every board has its own little touches and special gimmicks but the second season/set of boards made the final scoring less random and the mechanics reflected pinball more.

Wolf Hackers is marked as the earliest board and it really is little more than spaces for numbers. Ski ‘93 has inner areas that the ball has to jump to, creating an actual environment that reflects the pinball theme. 

I have found, while I don’t want to binge any individual board, grabbing a stack of them and playing one at a time. So, it’s more binging a tv show than binging a board game.

I have found Paper Pinball to be really solid brain fog games. The worse the brain fog, the earlier the board I reach for. (Yes, I’ve played Wolf Hackers the most) But Dice Fishing D6 is my reigning champion for brain fog gaming. I can tell how exhausting a month was by how much I played that particular game.

And I cannot express enough how, if you really want to play a game that _feels_ like a pinball machine, play WhizKids’ Super-Skill Pinball. Super-Skill Pinball does an excellent job recreating pinball. Paper Pinball is a dice game with a pinball theme. Super-Skill Pinball is a pinball game that uses dice. 

I came across Robin Gibson early in my PnP exploration in the form of Paper Pinball and Legends of Dsyx. While I think the Legends of Dsyx games are more innovative, experimental and ambitious, Paper Pinball is more solid and reliable. I know what I am getting into when I get a Paper Pinball board out. Paper Pinball has kept going for me for over five years.

A free bit of fluff made me reassess Gladden Design

Last year, I tried out a demo of Paper App Dungeon. And I did not enjoy the experience. And I really did not like that there wasn’t a PnP option, particularly since the spiral notebook format doesn’t lend itself to lamination.

Then, I learned there is a PnP option. In fact, I learned that Gladden Design has a number of PnP products. Including later Paper App designs that have been better received than dungeon.

At some point, I do plan on properly looking into their catalog. However, they had a tiny free game  Roll for the Goal. That I felt like I could try out right now.

It’s a soccer game where you draw a line to the goal on a dot grid. Roll a die for distance. If you end next a defender, roll off against their value. Roll under, you lose.

It’s a nothing little exercise but it answered all my issues with Paper App Dungeon. You actually have choices and there’s a combat system.

In fact, I went back and tried the Paper App Dungeon again to see if I had been wrong about it. Nope. Still don’t like it. 

However, Roll for the Goal has made me decide I want to eventually look further into Gladden Design and Tom Brinton’s work.

Can’t Stop Express as a game and as a historical artifact

I have been revisiting Can’t Stop Express, a game that I actually started playing before I had any idea who Sid Sackson was. 

My introduction to it was through BrettspielWelt, where you could open up a smaller window to play it (or Black Box) as a solitaire fidget. Sometimes, around the same time, one of my friends and I would play it on scrap paper while waiting for D&D games to start.

I find that I approach Can’t Stop Express from two directions: as a historical artifact and as a game.

Of the two, the historical one is more interesting for me. Sackson published the rules as Solitaire Dice in his book Gamut of Games in 1969. In it, he wrote that he wanted to create a dice game that wasn’t about gambling.

Since then, it was formally published as Choice, Einstein and Extra before Can’t Stop Express seems to have stuck. It’s never gone away but it doesn’t have the punch of the younger Can’t Stop. Which, to be fair, is an amazing game.

Mechanically, Can’t Stop Express is simple. Roll five dice. Pair up four of them and also mark down the fifth die. There aren’t any rerolls or any other dice manipulation. Your control and choices comes from the number of dice.

A few thoughts:

The fact that if you start a number, it’s negative two hundred points until you get a fifth check mark, adds a lot of stakes to your choices. And that fifth mark just zeroes it out. Getting just a positive score requires luck and good choices.

The reject numbers function as an automaton opponent before that was even a thing. In fact, your unused rolls working against you might be the biggest legacy of Can’t Stop Express. It’s a mechanic I’ve seen in many games and it’s the earliest example I’ve seen. The game might not have had the biggest mass appeal but A Gamut of Games is a book that game designers read.

I knew that the game is now a multi-player solitaire with everyone using the same die rolls. However, when I went back to look at the rules in A Gamut of Games, I found that it also listed that for competitive play. Fourteen years before Take It Easy. I had no idea there was an example that old! Heck, I think my friends and I just took turns, back in the day.

These days, there are Roll and Writes I would pick before Can’t Stop Express. It is dry and it’s actually quite difficult to do well. However, virtually all those games are post-Qwixx. For over forty years, Can’t Stop Express was one of the best Roll and Writes I can think of. It blows Yahtzee or Kismet or the justifiably obscure 6 Steps out of the water.

From a contemporary standpoint, Can’t Stop Express is decent. From a historical perspective, it keeps impressing me.

Lil Gator Game is a perfect, golden afternoon

Our family loves us some cozy indie video games. In fact, that's almost all of what I’ve personally played video game-wise for the last couple years lol And we really enjoyed Lil Gator Game.

You probably didn't think you needed a violence-free reimaging of Breath of the Wild as a kid running around a park, smacking cardboard monsters and making friends. I certainly didn't think that. But I turned out I was wrong.

I believe that the official description of the game is a 3D platformer but it's really an open sandbox that just happens to be very small. However, since you are playing a child, the park still feels huge.

The game has two parts. Knocking down cardboard monsters while collecting the scraps for arts and crafts and making friends by doing 'quests'. While some of the quests actually involve some work, others are very simple. One of my favorites is a girl who's fallen down and all Lil Gator needs to do is giver her a hug to make her feel better.

The game wears its Breath of the Wild influence very much on its sleeve. In fact, the game all but name checks the Legend of Zelda several times. While they can't use the name, the designers using the hero of legend with their sword and shield and hat and paraglider make it clear what they're talking about.

While running around a lovingly rendered park is charming and fun, the heart of Lil Gator is the relationship between the title character and their older sister.  When they were younger, they played legend of hero games in the park all the time. Unfortunately, with college, grownup responsibilities have made her pull back from that. The entire game is Lil Gator creating a massive version of their game to try and win her back.

One of the things that the game makes very clear is the sister very much loves Lil Gator and that the game was (and is) important to her. The park is full of memories of the two of them. However, grownup responsibilities are pushing down on her. She is fully sympathetic. 

Lil Gator manages to capture a sense of innocence that you usually need Ray Bradbury to find. It also manages to have some real emotional heft. Not as bittersweet as Ray Bradbury's feels though. It is fun to explore the park but it also has a center that reminds you why you're there.

Lil Gator Game is a very short game and it’s not a difficult game. My wife has to watch me play platformers with her eyes shut and preferably in another room but I could handle it. Instead, it has loads of charm. It is the perfect afternoon with the knowledge that it can’t last.

AKA Goldfish is a flawed early work but still delivers devastating gut punches

Humble Bundle recently let me go down a rabbit hole and revisit the past with their Brian Michael Bendis bundle. 

Back in the day, I picked up the collected Goldfish from Caliber. I remember that there had been some buzz about it, that it had led to the well regarded Jynx series. It was also set in Cleveland, a city I was familiar with. I also remember how I wasn’t able to get through the thing.

So Humble Bundle gave me a second chance. I found it much easier going this time. This edition was called AKA Goldfish. Apparently, the title has flip flopped over the years.

AKA Goldfish is a crime story. It’s also very much film noire. And it’s a tragedy. Those three things tend to go well together. It’s far from perfect and I think it’s reputation is partially based on nostalgia and the fame Bendis justifiably earned farther down the road but there’s some heft to it too.

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Conman Dave Gold, AKA Goldfish, comes back to Cleveland after ten years away to take custody of his son. The mother is his estranged lover Lauren Becall, who has become a crime boss during those ten years.

And, yes, it all falls apart and ends horribly. So horribly that it manages to be emotional gut punch to the reader even though you can see it coming a mile away.. And, no, she isn’t the real Lauren Becall. 

Bendis does his own artwork in AKA Goldfish and it is a fascinating mixed bag. It’s black and white but it isn’t line outlines. Instead, it is full of huge slabs of black with lots of negative space. One reviewer compared it to making a comic book out of movie posters and I can’t give a better description than that.

And when it works, it’s good. Striking still images. However, too often it is so dark and muddy, it’s hard to figure out what it going on. In particular, I had problems figuring out what character was on the page at times. Bendis as an artist, particularly in his use of black ink, makes Mike Mignola look like Charles Schulz. And I mean that as a compliment to both Mignola and Schulz. It’s just so murky and unclear.

Bendis’s strength is his writing and that’s the strength of AKA Goldfish. It manages to be compelling even though every single character is a terrible person, even though you know from the start that it will all end in tears. The hook is how broken everyone is. 

One of the through lines in the book (major spoilers) is the gun Becall gave Goldfish when they were younger and he refused to use. In ultimately ends up in their son’s hands and he uses it to kill Becall. Not because he is lashing out or out vengeance of her abusive parenting but just to stop her from killing. And the kid gets killed almost immediately afterwards. It’s so bloody obvious but Bendis manages to make it work. Possibly through sheer audacity.

In many ways, AKA Goldfish is clearly a very early work. But it also feels so world weary. It reminds me of how I always do a double take when I’m reminded that Tom Waits was in his twenties when he recorded albums like Nighthawks at the Diner and Small Change.

AKA Goldfish is not my new favorite Bendis work. Far from it. It is so bleak I can’t recommend it in good faith to a lot of people. It is too often confusing and clunky. However, when it hits, it makes your head spin.

Koala Rescue Club is a series of knife fights in phone booths with just one die

Koala Rescue Club is the second collaboration between Joey Games and Postmark games. It’s a Print and Play, Roll and Write game for as many players as you can cram in. It’s designed by Phil Walker-Harding, the same guy who designed Sushi Go, Imhotep and Barenpark. And part of the proceeds go to real life koala conservation.

Well, that’s a lot to unpack.

Okay. The idea behind the game is that you are planting trees and rehoming koalas in them. The actual boards are collections of irregular grids connected by bridges.

The mechanics are very simple. Roll a die to determine a polynomial (or is it polyhedral?) shape. You then use that shape to either plant trees OR rehome koalas. No

mixing and matching. You can also disregard the roll and fill in one space. The rules say to draw a circle for a tree and an inner circle for a koala. I have ended up marking a slash for a tree and a back slash for a koala so a completed space is an X. 

On each board, you initially only have access to one area. You get bonuses by filling in rows and columns with koalas (meaning you have to fill in trees first) One of these bonuses is bridges to new areas.

The other bonuses include filling in a tree, filling in a koala, gaining a volunteer (which can be used as +/- 1 to a roll) or filing in a circle on a small group of hospitals on the edge of the map. Fully completed hospitals are worth points. And getting to fill in a bonus tree or koala is actually a big deal. You will end up with holes.

The game lasts two rounds of fifteen turns. You score at the end of each round. You get one point for each area completely filled in with trees, one point for each area completely filled in with koalas. Completed hospitals are worth varying points. Each map also has three bonus goals which just get scored at the end of the game.

I went into Koala Rescue Club with mixed impressions. On the one hand, both Walker-Harding and Post Mark Games have solid track records for me, including their previous collaboration Scribbly Gum. On the other hand, drawing shapes on grid is a very heavily used mechanic and only using one die flattens the odds and limits the possibilities.

(And, yes, Waypoints, also from Post Mark Games, also only uses one die. It’s not a hard-and-fast rule)

It took a bit for Koala Rescue Club to grow on me but it did grow on me. The game is all about tight spaces and tight margins. Each space is its own little knife-fight-in-a-phone-booth. And because you have to fill in every area entirely before it scores any points, every single point is tight.

But if that is your jam, and sometimes that’s exactly what I am in the mood for, having your plan come together in Koala Rescue Club is very satisfying. And you definitely have to maximize the use of the bonuses.

However, while I have come to definitely enjoy the game, I also know that it is designed for classroom use. And, having run games in classrooms, I can definitely see a lot of students getting really frustrated with Koala Rescue Club. It is honestly more of a gamer game.

(On the other hand, I can see the other Joey Games game I’ve played, Scribbly Gum, working much better in the classroom. It has a much more open decision tree.)

Koala Rescue Club might not be for everyone but it is a solid, top tier Roll and Write. And it has the bonus of going to a good cause.