Yoshi’s world is beautiful

 After my wife finished Kirby and the Forgotten Land, we needed more cute video games in our lives. So she found the older title of Yoshi’s Crafted World.

Sweet Zelda, Yoshi’s Crafted World makes Kirby seem like Call of Duty!

I have a weird opinion of Yoshi, Mario’s dinosaur buddy. I think he’s a great character and an adorable design. But ever since I found out he exists, he has always felt like his own thing who just happens to be in Mario games. 

Mario doesn’t seem to show up in the crafted world so that just reinforces my view :D

Plot: Baby Bowser broke the magical Sundream Stone and the Yoshi’s have to go through platformer levels to put it back together. No, it’s not Shakespeare.

But, as someone who’s just watching the game, what is incredibly striking is the setting. Yoshi is traveling through a wonder land of kindergarten  crafts. If the kindergartners were very talented and had access to infinite recyclables.

The folks behind Yoshi’s Crafted World went all in on their design aesthetic. I understand an earlier game was a yarn world so this is clearly part of the Yoshi brand. The crafted elements are so fully realized that I have to assume they made real models in order to code them. And you can replay levels from the other direction so each element had to be fully rendered from both sides.

I may not end up playing Yoshi’s Crafted World but I am really enjoying seeing it. I can understand why some folks make money playing video games for other people to watch. This way, you can appreciate the artwork that went into creating the game. The lighthearted whimsy of Yoshi makes Animal Crossing look like Silent Hill.

So that’s why the kids like Demon Slayer

 After I kept seeing multiple students reading Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba (and I’m going to call it just Demon Slayer from here on out), I finally asked one what was so special about the manga. I was told that they really liked the character development.

So I got the first few volumes out of the public library so I could read it for myself. (As someone who is old enough to remember when the United States was given Mazinger Z as Tranzor Z and when Robotech was actually a good thing, I think we live in an age of wonder as far as manga and anime is concerned)

Here’s the one sentence pitch: After a demon ravages a boy’s family, the boy devotes himself to slaying demons and restoring his demonic sister’s humanity.

So, the actual plot isn’t that unusual. Tanjiro and his true companions fight the monster of the week. New powers show up as necessary. If you’ve read any Shonen stuff, it’s familiar.

However, I found the character of Tanjiro to be unlike what I was used to in Shonen heroes. To be fair, I’m a dabbler and far from up to date on developments. But I’m used to hot-blooded idiots or cynical anti-heroes. 

Tanjiro, on the other hand, is very sensitive and empathetic. I’m fact, his sensitivity helps fuel his fantastical sword fighting.  He mourns for demons’ intrinsic tragedies. (He still slays them on any day ending in Y, of course)

It is very easy for me to see why some students would really take to Tanjiro. He is a character that they can relate to and has traits they probably aspire to.

(All that said, the fact that Nezuko, the most significant female character, has been reduced to a child mentally and has to wear a bamboo gag feels problematic for me, no matter the story justification)

Why I try to stay up to date on design contests

 One thing that has changed in my experiences with design contests as that I have to make sure I download any files I want to look at before the contest is over.

That’s because more and more often, files get taken done so the designer can pursue monetizing their game one way or another. And, while I’m out for all the free files I can get my grubby little hands on., I can’t complain :D

It is their intellectual property after all. And getting published has to be  the dream of most game designers. And, while I might have to pay Kris attention to contest dates, I think the overall quality of the games is going up, which makes paying attention worth it.

Looking back, the first design contest I seriously looked at was the 2015 18-Card Contest. A format that I don’t even think exists any more. And I’d say there has been noticeable shifts in the overall PnP culture since then.

I think straight up digitally selling PnP files has become a stronger business model. And in particular, Roll and Write PnPs have gotten bigger market share. Don’t get me wrong, PnP is still a niche but it has grown as a niche.

When I first looked at PnP at all (which was longer ago than 2015), my vague memories were that that a lot of what was for sale was war games and 18XX kits. Either one of those is a big crafting production. 

Compared to that, a lot of Roll and Writes are print out a sheet and add dice. I could be entirely wrong but I feel PnP has attracted a more casual audience.

And since I’m more of a casual audience member, that works for me.

13 Sheep in the classroom

 I had the opportunity to teach a fifth grade class 13 Sheep and run through a couple games of it with them. And I took that opportunity because I love teaching games :)

Honestly, unless it’s built into the syllabus, there’s not much call for teaching board games as a substitute teacher. Keeping the kids focused and on task is the job. And if games get to be on the lesson plan, they need to be for education, not distraction. 

Trust me, I haven’t seen a class yet that needs help being distracted.

13 Sheep is one of the simplest Roll and Write games that I know of that I still think offers interesting choices. It also follows the Take it Easy paradigm of everyone doing their own thing on their own board. That meant I could have an entire class room playing the same game at the same time.

While I supplied the game and the teaching, the teacher who I was helping supplied the structure. In addition to critical thinking, which 13 Sheep definitely has going on, he wanted the kids to look at emergent behavior. Really, more their own behavior than anything else :)

This involved having them examine the game sheet before telling them any of the rules. This also involved playing more than one game (which wasn’t hard, even under the circumstances) and unpacking what they learned from each game.

Honestly, I probably learned more than the kids from the experience. Obviously, there are some games that have an obvious educational slant. The 10 Days series reaching geography as one obvious example. However, I already thought that using games to help critical thinking and judgement was a good idea. And this one session helped me consider how to approach that.

Do they still teach Jonathan Livingston Seagull?

 Johnathan Livingston Seagull fits into a category of books that I think of as ‘the lazy high school book report book’

That’s really because it’s such a short work that still qualifies as a classic. The Great Gatsby and Anthem and the Pearl fit the same bill. Amusingly, as a grown up, this category of books is tempting again due to time management.

My earliest memories of JLS isn’t actually of the book. My first exposure came from a narrated summary with a set of stills that I watched in middle school. That same series also included Contents of a Dead Man’s Pocket and By the Waters of Babylon. I can’t seem to find a reference to this format.  I guess it has faded into the mists of time and education.

JLS is the story of a sea gull whose love of flying transcends his need for social norms. Indeed, it leads to transcending to a higher plane of existence. Which happens about a quarter of the way through the book so I’m not spoiling much.

In a story whose whole point is metaphysical, JLS has some grounded touches that are almost jarring. In particular, the technical aspects of avian flight gets a surprising amount of attention.  But Richard Bach was a flight instructor so it makes sense.

Compared to other lazy book report books, JLS is less obviously challenging. Jonathan resolves conflict by basically ignoring it, making it hard to remember that there actually is any conflict. The book may be about pantheism or it may be about the triumph of the individual over conformity or it might just be about being yourself. There’s options for kids’ book reports.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull is a feel good parable. Which isn’t a condemnation. When folks say true art has to be angsty and life has to be serious, creating a feel good parable isn’t easy.

Post Script: 

While doing the research for this blog, I learned that Richard Bach added a fourth section to the book, one that he apparently had written back in the 70s. It’s set a thousand years after Jonathan’s time, when seagulls revere his teaching but don’t actually fly. But there are those who still want to fly.

Il’ll have to find a copy sometime.

MCU and the many faces of Moon Knight

 As of me writing this, Disney+ is now halfway through their MCU version of Moon Knight. And it is abundantly clear that,’even more so than WandaVision, I’m going to have to actually see it all the way through to see what they are actually trying to do.

I haven’t been a regular Marvel Comics reader for a long time. Pretty much entirely due to logistics as opposed to lack of interest. I do like grabbing the odd graphic over from the library every now and then. I did read a fair chunk of Moon Knight’s first couple decades of existence but I don’t know what Marvel has done with the character lately.

Moon Knight is very much a writers’ hero because he’s never been popular enough for there to be a definitive version. Writers have historically been able to be flexible about how they depict the character.

I’ve often heard Moon Knight described as what if Batman was definitively an insane jerk. And I don’t think that’s unfair, even if it skips over a lot of the nuance. I do think Moon Knight is a very Bronze Age creation. He’s always veered towards gritty and street level with possible supernatural elements.

The MCU Moon Knight is definitely gritty but veers away from being street level. Instead, it uses psychological horror to take the story to more global settings and threats. Moon Knight and their different personalities are wandering through a half-lit gallery of ghosts and gods.

I will say that the MCU version SEEMS to have definitive supernatural elements. (Hey, there is still room to pull the rug out from under our feet in that regards, although I’m not expecting it) While I personally like it nebulous whether or not Moon Knight has some sort of mystic abilities or if he’s delusional but the tv show needs to stand on its own virtues, not my preferences.

On the positive side, Moon Knigjt has kept me interested. On the down side, I haven’t found the characters terribly sympathetic or empathetic. Which isn’t required but is something expect with super heroes. (Of course, you can argue that Moon Knight isn’t a super _hero_)

Okay, Mario doesn’t work in D&D

 One of the dangers of years of playing D&D (or probably a bunch of other games) is the urge to figure out what the class and level of a fictional character would be. I remember watching Brotherhood of the Wolf with gaming buddies and we were constantly adjusting our stats of Fronsac as we watched.

Of course, TSR was as bad as any of us. An early column of Dragon Magazine called Giants in the Earth was literally just statting out whatever fictional characters they thought they could get away with. (No Lord of the Rings because the Tolkien estate was known to be litigious but I did find out about Karl Wagner’s Kane because of it)

For the most part, I’ve grown out of this tendency. But I’ve found myself thinking about how D&D would interpret Mario.

Since he jumps around and kills his enemies by landing on them unarmed, he’s clearly a monk. End of story. That’s not why the Shaolin plumber fascinates me as a D&D concept.

No, it’s the fact that Mario has been in literally hundreds of games. The guy has to have crazy experience points and shot past epic levels long ago. That’s the only explanation for why a plumber monk has taken the time to devote skill points to go kart piloting.

Obviously a first edition Mario just has to walk into the same room as the Grand Master of Flowers and he’d automatically get the title. Mario is the Perry Rhodan of video game heroes. (Yes, that means I’m telling you all I know about Perry Rhodan is that he’s been in over 400 books)

And yes, this whole train of thought is nonsense. Mario has no relationship to Dungeons and Dragons and makes no sense in the context of it. His abilities and limitations are defined by the technology used to implement him and the challenges the designers have him overcome. He can wrestle a turtle dragon into submission but an armless mushroom goblin can kill him with one touch. No edition of Dungeons and Dragons can justify that.

What this entire exercise actually shows is one more example of human natures desperate tendency to explain things and explain them in a format we can claim expertise in.

Popular histories of video games?

 Thanks to Humble Bundle, I have discovered a publisher called Boss Fight Books that specializes in popular histories of video games.

Popular history, according to my family, is when you still use facts, sources and interviews but simplify and flatten things into order to create a narrative. And probably sanitize things. That definition might say more about my family than the concept of popular history :P

Boss Fight Books has each book be about a specific video game. More than that, if I understand it correctly, the authors got to pick what the game they wrote about. And it’s usually clearly been a game that was meaningful to the author.

That being said, having the bias completely out in the open makes it more acceptable to me. I don’t view it as propaganda but as fan testimony.

I’ve been reading the books like they are the literary popcorn. They are very light and fluffy. And I’ve been wondering what book would make me feel like blogging about the publisher.

It turns out that it’s the book about NBA Jam called NBA Jam. A wildly successful and influential video game that I never heard of about a subject I’m not really interested in.

(I think basketball is an AMAZING game for hobby and recreation, even though I am beyond abysmal at it. It works perfectly indoors and outdoors and is easily adapted to the half court. But I think sports work better as activities than as entertainment)

And I now know how BOOMSHAKALAKA became a part of global vocabulary.

But the book was actually more about the people who designed the game (particularly Mark Turmell) and the last days of Midway Games. (A history of Mortal Kombat would probably cover the exact same ground as far as Midway’s history is concerned)

And it kept me interested and entertained. Many of the books (not all of them) just use video games to frame the lives of their creators and the fortunes of their publishers. NBA Jam does that in spades. Quite frankly, it was framed like a classic tragedy with a video game back drop.

As I’ve already mentioned, the Boss Battle Books books are written by fans, push the narrative and polish the rough edges. However, they are entertaining and you will still end up learning something.

Musings about optimal play

I’ve brought up the concept of optimal play, recently. Which brings up two points: Is it desirable and is it possible?

What is optimal play? I’m going with the act of consistently making decisions that have the greatest likelihood of resulting in the destined outcome. Which is probably winning the game, since we are talking about gaming, but not necessarily.

Frankly, I think that’s a more nuanced definition than ‘Making the best moves to win’

When I think of optimal play as a concept, I often think of a scene from the manga/anime Hikaru no Go, which proves that the game of Go is more thrilling than a light sabre duel over a pit filled with shogoth. When Touya is forced to play three games simultaneously with his back turned, his joseki is strong enough that he can pull it off.

Joseki, as I understand it, is the equivalent of Chess opening moves but involve a lot more moves and deal with smaller percentages of the board. Because a Go board is a HUGE piece of board game real estate. The Hikaru no Go example isn’t realistic but it does give an example of how understanding a game leads to optimal play.

Go may be the perfect example of a game for optimal play. Perfect information and no random elements. Go is all about the skill and Go has been researched for centuries with no final conclusion in sight.

With most other games, I think there are three elements that make me question optimal play as a viable concept. Random elements. Multiple paths to victory. Variable desired results. (Which is not the same as multiple paths to victories but can be related)

Random factors are the least important element. I mean, seeing as how most games have random factors, they are just something you have to factor in. Optimal play doesn’t mean a game is solved. Unless a game is solved. Then it’s not a game anymore. It’s a puzzle.

And while winning is kind of the core concept for most games, the nature of winning can be more complicated. There may be more than one way to win. And interactions with everyone else at the table can get affect how and what you do.

Ultimately, I think optimal play is a loaded term. I’m not saying that folks shouldn’t do their best to play their best. However, as much as games are about winning and losing, the process and experience just isn’t that binary. 

Rat Hot keeps a space in the back of my mind

 I haven’t played Rat Hot that much but it’s one that I find myself referring back to a lot in my head.

That’s because it was either the first tile laying game I played where the tiles were allowed to overlap or it was the first good one I played. Anyway, it made an impression.

The game has thick, chunky tiles that are three by one so it’s like you are playing with itty bitty planks. I’ve seen one PnP file for the game that’s designed to turn a Jenga set into a Rat Hot set. 

Which actually isn’t a crazy idea. One of the placement rules is that, while you can stack tiles in top of each other, you can’t have gaps underneath. Using Jenga tiles would definitely help make that an easy rule to track.

But, in all honestly, what makes Rat Hot stay stuck in my head is the sudden death rules. If you end your turn with three rats of your color exposed, you lose. Good day, sir, you get nothing. To be honest, if memory serves me correctly, it takes either bad luck or bad play for it to actually happen. BUT it does mean you can make moves that your opponent has to react to. In Go terms, atari. (As opposed to in video game terms where Atari means something quite different)

But, as I mentioned, for me, this was one of the first times I saw overlapping tiles. Since then, I have seen that mechanic enough that it’s not even remotely novel. And I am absolutely sure it wasn’t the first use of it either.

I also don’t think that Rat Hot represents an innovation point in game design. I’m pretty sure games like Micro Rome or Hanging Gardens would exist without it. I do wonder if it influenced  HUE from the Pack O Game series.

Rat Hot isn’t one of my favorite Michael Schacht games. It doesn’t even make it into my top ten of his games. But it has survidd many purges and stayed in my collection.

I wow t let optimal play ruin my Catan

To gamers of a certain age, Catan is ubiquitous with entering the hobby. I don’t think that’s the case anymore. I think the options have grown so much greater that no single game draws people in.

(I do suspect that Dungeons and Dragons still holds that place for RPGs. But with the sheer number of exceptions and loopholes baked into every edition, after you’ve played D&D, you’re ready to take on almost every other system. It’s a useful starting point) 

I have met people who put Catan on a pedestal and people who have nothing but disdain for it. I’m closer to the first group but I try not to have my glasses too rosé colored. (And apparently the game continues to sell just fine)

A big reason that I hold that Catan still hold up is that it does such a good job keeping all the players engaged and active in the game. The trading is intrinsic part of player interaction.

But… 

I’ve been told by multiple competitive players that tournament-level players in Europe almost never trade. That they consider trading to be a very weak, desperation move.

So… am I wrong? Is what I feel is one of Catan’s strongest points contrary to optimal play?

Well, I’m prepared to accept that that is a reasonable argument. But I’m going to play the social card. 

Catan is a family-weight game for a family audience. And under those circumstances and conditions, trading and interaction is good. So there.

I’ll save the optimal play for if I ever get back into Go.

.5 more cents about Reiner Knizia

 I recently commented on how Reiner Knizia slipped off the top 100 games and how Tigris and Euphrates then climbed back up. Probably due to the uproar of it falling off the top 100.

Which reminded me that, while I greatly respect Tigris and Euphrates, it’s not my favorite Knizia game. That would be Ingenious. Which, to be fair, uses the same scoring system that Knizia used oin Tigris and Euphrates.

As I thought about it, I realized that there are a lot of Knizia games I would rather play than Tigris and Euphrates. Off the top of my head, they include Ra, Through the Desert, Modern Art, Money, Lost Cities, Samurai, Blue Moon City and High Society. The list is actually keeps on going but you get the idea.

There are two things I noticed about these games. One, almost all of them are a lot shorter than Tigris and Euphrates. Right now, forty-five minutes is my idea of a long game :D 

The other is that these are all older Knizia games.  Which ties back into having a limited time budget. 

That said, I bet I’d enjoy his newer stuff.

Post script:

I also realized that Money, High Society, and Through the Desert have all been go to games for me to take to conventions and other gaming events. Short, easy to teach and almost always engaging enough that people want multiple plays. I’ve seen other folks use Modern Art and Samurai in the same way. Knizia has a knack for making very accessible games. (Although Stefan Dora’s For Sale is the absolute best game I’ve found for this)

My March Gaming

When I looked back at February, I was surprised at how much gaming I got in since it was a busy month. Well, March ended up being a month where gaming took a back seat. Knew there were going to be some.

I only learned two games in March and they were both very, very light games from contests. Rolling Pins from the 10th Roll and Write Contest and Ceramicus from the 2022 9-Card Contest.

Rolling Pins, which was my prerequisite Roll and Write for the month, adds a bowling theme to Shut the Box. Which I think is a clever and effective idea but, in all honestly, a good portion of the enjoyment of Shut the Box is the physical manipulation of the box. 

Ceramicus is basically a nine-card Spot Ot. Each card has five patterns and any two cards will share one symbol. So it’s a speed matching game. I actually got several plays out of it but nine cards isn’t enough for variety. 

Both Rolling Pins and Ceramicus are examples of mechanically solid ideas that, well, don’t have enough for a lot of play. That said, I can see Ceramicus being a handy wallet game for waiting in the car.

I don’t know if I’ll be able to do much gaming stuff in April. Still, even a little bit is good.

My March PnP

Time to write about my PnP projects from March. This is what I made made last month:

Bury Me in the Rift

Apex Barrel (2021 9-Card Characters) 

Stunt Kites

Ceramicus (2022 9-Card Contest)

Pocket Aquarium 

My ‘big’ projects for the month were Stunt Kites and Pocket Aquarium. At 18 cards each, they were tied for size. I bought both of them from PnP Arcade. I have to admit that the themes were what got me interested in both of them.

I have had Bury Me in the Rift (original nine card version) and Apex Barrel printed out for months. I just wanted to clear them out. And Ceramicus just looked cute.

My spare time is now at a point where I have to manage it carefully to get in crafting time. I am glad with how my life has become busy. At the same time, taking a little time each month to craft is emotionally and mentally rewarding.