Common Grounds is a fine mix of comedy and pathos

 I stumbled upon Common Grounds by Troy Hickman over twenty years after it came out. A six-issue limited series, it is either obscure or I’m just an uncultured cad for having never heard of it.

But Common Grounds is worth discovering.

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The titular Common Grounds is a chain of doughnut shops that serve as a neutral ground for superheroes and supervillains, where they can meet and talk without violence. It’s an anthology, tiny slices of life, but forming an overall arc that we only see by the end.

More than anything else, Common Grounds reads like a love letter to Astro City. And, coming from me, that is a huge compliment. Superheroes as people is hardly new. That was the point of the Fantastic Four and an idea that Spider-Man elevated to darn near perfection. But Common Grounds does it really well. 

Like Astro City, Common Grounds is a world of original characters that are built off of archetypes to the degree that you intuitively understand who they are. And you can picture the characters being able to hold down their own series.

While the core concept lends itself to comedy, and there is comedy to be sure, there is also drama and even tragedy. Sometimes in the same story. A reunion of goofy giant monsters from the 1950s has a total mood shift when they hear about a child’s death from domestic violence. ‘Who is the real monster?’ works when it’s done well. 

And I don’t think that’s one of the stronger stories.

 

Little details and callbacks add up as the stories go on, culminating in the origin of the Common Grounds itself, rooted in tragedy and hope.

I wonder what an ongoing Common Grounds series could have been like. There was the potential for so many more stories. However, getting even these six issues and their cohesive vision is a delight. 

My November Gaming

 My gaming in November pretty much revolved around play testing. To be perfectly honest, I didn’t have a lot of time for gaming in November. So getting a chance to do some play testing ended up being a way of making that time count.

I learned:

Paper Pinball - Miasma 

The Daily Weather (play test)

Wilderness 

Astro Rove (play test)

Jarl (play test)

Beyond the games that I played tested, I learned a couple of fairly simple Roll and Writes. One of them was part of the Paper Pinball series, which I have decided to finish my way working through so that I can just play whatever ones I want without any sense of an agenda.

While I don’t feel comfortable really discussing unpublished games, I will say at I think The Daily Weather and Jarl represent opposite ends of Button Shy’s spectrum while both being really good expressions of those extremes. I hope they do well when they get published.

I don’t always have the time or the concentration for Button Shy’s play testing forum. However I do appreciate the experience. And some months, it helps add structure to my limited gaming time.

My November PnP

 November ended up involving more PnP crafting than I had expected. That was entirely due to Button Shy’s playtest forum.

I made:

Twin Stars Season One

The Daily Weather (play test)

Music City

Dice Fishing D6

Roll on the Range

Koy

Pinball Builder + Expansion

Astro ROVE (play test)

Jarl (play test)

Reawaken (play test) 

Originally, the only project I had planned was the first set of Twin Stars cards. All I remember from my earlier tries at the system was finding it frustrating but I want to see how it feels with some years of solitaire gaming under my belt. 

I ended up making some other ‘big’ projects. I have high hopes for Roll on the Range and Koy but the rules of Pinball Builder feel like the designer is making a lot of assumptions about what the reader will understand.

I’m hoping to get to all of those games but it was the play testing that was my focus for November and the real focus of my crafting. And that’s been fun.