Ring Around the Sun is basically the X-Men versus the 1%

 A little over a year ago, I decided that I should really try Clifford D. Simak again, after not being able to get through his books back in middle school or high school. And, while I don’t agree with all his conclusions, I now found him to be a really solid read.

I had meant to keep reading his work and realized that it had been a year so I picked up Ring Around the Sun.

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Set what was then the near future (and is now before a lot of folks reading this were born lol), the world is teetering on the edge of the Cold War becoming a hot war. Into this, a mysterious group is introducing major social changes with inexpensive food and  household items that never wear out, up to and including actual houses.

The mysterious group turns out to be mutants, the next step in evolution. And their long term plan is to break the human race out of a self-destructive death spiral and create healthier cultures. This includes having folks emigrate to alternate time lines where the human race doesn’t exist so there’s a fresh Earth for them.

However, the 1% will do anything, up to and including nuclear war to keep the mutants from upsetting their world of money and power and privilege. In my limited reading, Simak leans on the idealism so it’s not a surprise that things work out okay.

While there are elements that are quite dated (a world changing innovation are razor blades that never wear out), the idea of the 1% willing to destroy the world to prevent a post scarcity society still seems pretty believe.

One thing that I did find interesting was Simak’s approach to pastoralism in Ring Around the Sun. He clearly disliked urban life and idealized rural living. And yet, he clearly and intentionally undercuts that in this book. Vickers, the protagonist, wants the rural Midwest to be innocent and harmless but it is clearly shown to not be. The other world has the transplanted folk living a rugged frontier life but it is clearly supported by industrial centers run by robots far enough away to be out of sight.

I felt like Simak was telling me that the fantasy of the pastoral life was important but only as a fantasy.

Every time I’ve gone to Simak, I’ve have found really strong writing and him presenting his case as an argument, not as a done deal. And good grief, his work is chock full of ideas. I read somewhere that John Campbell wanted authors to have their stories center around one idea but Simak not only has everything and the kitchen sink, he’s trying to find room for a second sink.

Somehow, Simak managed to write science fiction that is escapist and asks tough questions at the same time.

So Walt Kelly wrote high adventure to advertise bread?

 The Adventures of Peter Wheat was a sword and sorcery comic book about a tiny prince living among talking animals, created by Walt Kelly of Pogo fame as a promotion for a bakery.

Wow. That sentence has so much to unpack. In fact, while I didn’t find it a bad read at all, the story of The Adventures of Peter Wheat is more interesting than the comic itself.

Peter Wheat was a home-delivery bakery service, like the milk man only for baked goods. From what I can tell, the comics were a free giveaway item for services that sold Peter Wheat products.

Possibly because it wasn’t published by a regular comic book publisher, details about the series seem all over the place. It seems there was also Peter Wheat News, which included mini stories about Peter and his world. Some sources say that the series lasted 35 issues. Others say 66 but that Walt Kelly only wrote and drew the first 35.

I found out about the series because the first sixteen issues were part of Humble Bundle I picked up. Looking into it, the entire series has been reprinted by Hermes Press. What is impressive about that is older articles that I read felt that some issues were lost media and gone forever.

When I actually sat down to read the volumes, it did not feel like the Walt Kelly of Pogo Possum. What I often forget is that Kelly got his start at Walt Disney, both as an animator and working on Disney comic books. I think Peter Wheat reflects his Disney work more than his Pogo work.

While it has twee elements that feel like they escaped from Dot and Tot of Merryland (a book that scarred me so badly it is my default for twee), the Adventures of Peter Wheat is very much an adventure comic. Peter is the inch-tall prince of a kingdom of talking animals by a wheat field and must fend off various threats, particularly the Hornet Kingdom. (Dragonel, queen of the hornets and daughter of the Grand Wizard would totally be Peter’s love interest if he wasn’t a little kid)

For me, no character defined the dichotomy better than Sammy Sweet. He lives in the land of Sugar Bun, uses the wheat from the wheat field to make treats, and leads his bakers into battle with a sword.

Two things that really struck me were that there is a lot of continuity in the stories, including multi-issues stories and that there is no reference to the actual Peter Wheat bakery. You know, this business the whole thing is an ad for. When Spider-Man was promoting Hostess, he was throwing twinkies at Doctor Octopus. Not Peter Wheat. Just swords and talking animals.

Honestly, if I didn’t already know and if there wasn’t an ad at the end, I’d never have realized it was a promotional comic. 

The Adventures of Peter Wheat is well written but not earth shaking. But the fact that it exists at all is kind of cool.

Legit Civ-lite in eighteen cards

 The Rise of a Jarl has been described as the most complex game that Button Shy has published. Which, to be fair, isn’t that strong a statement, seeing as how Button Shy is a haven for casual gamers.

While my own introduction to Jarl was through Button Shy’s play testing forum, it was attracting interest even before then. 

Jarl is a solitaire Civ-lite game (If Roll Through the Ages counts as Civ-lite, Jarl definitely does) where you are building up a Viking kingdom. You’ve got resource management, warfare, tech, geographic expansion and infrastructure. Honestly, the biggest absence for the Civ-lite label is a lack of epic time scope.

That’s pretty hefty for an eighteen-card game. One card serves as your play mat while the other cards wear many hats as actions, resources, coins, population, countries and technology. 

The game lasts four rounds. Each round ends with an increasingly strong raider attacks. If you can’t fight off the last one, you lose. Otherwise, you figure out how many points your Viking empire is worth. (There is already an expansion which changes victory conditions but I’ll get to that later)

Back in the day, one of my old gaming groups used to play Glory to Rome a lot. And Jarl uses the same basic structure as Glory to Rome. If you know it or one of its descendants like Mottainaj, you are three quarters of the way to learning Jarl.

By giving me a solitaire, more compact Glory to Rome experience, Jarl turned out to be a game that I didn’t know I was looking for.

There are, of course, meaningful differences. Having so few cards makes resources for everything incredibly tight. Choices in technology are key, to the point where there are clear strategies based around specific tech.

If you do reach the point where play becomes too formulaic (which I think will take some time. I’m certainly not even close to it), the first (or only?) expansion adds point goals which will adjust depending on your choices. I don’t like expansions that ‘fix’ games but I do like ones that breath new life to games.

The Rise of a Jarl punches above its weight. It does its theme justice and is well worth the play.

My March Gaming

 March was a month where time wasn’t on my side for gaming, let alone learning new games. Despite that, I managed to cram in some decent faming.

I learned:

Zoning Out

Weeds (TravelSoft)

Unstable Potions (Alexander Shen)

Rolling Slimes

The Cursed Cat (playtest)

On top of that, I also was part of the playtests for most recent prototypes of Jarl and Reawakening. Both are on the heavier side for Button Shy. I hope Jarl in particular finds its audience.

I also have to say that I enjoyed The Cursed Cat enough that I may very well keep playing the beta version even though the play test is over. The fact that we just got two black cats is a total coincidence.

I always try and learn at least one Roll and Write a month. This time, the only one I learned was Rolling Slimes. Which I did not enjoy. But I’ve already written about that.

Actually, the only game I learned last month that I don’t plan on playing again is Rolling Slime. That’s pretty good.

So, you want to play Sprawlopolis with pyramids

 Zoning Out is a Looney Pyramid adaptation of Sprawlopolis. That’s the elevator pitch and also pretty much everything you need to know if you’re going to be interested in it.

Personally, I have been a longtime fan of the pyramid games. I started following Button Shy when they kickstarted Cunning Folk and the Sprawlopolis line is one of their high points. I’m about as target demographic as you’re going to get.

You are building a city out of pyramids. All the pyramids go in a bag so the only thing you can decide when pulling one out is the size. And that’s key because the big placement restriction is that a pyramid can’t be next to a pyramid of the same size. 

The rules don’t quite out and out say this but is very clear that the city is a grid and a little pyramid and a big pyramid functionally occupy the same amount of space. Diagonals don't matter so you’re only worrying about orthogonals. 

Where Zoning Out really shows it’s Sprawlopolis roots is that there are eighteen special scoring conditions. I made cards for them but you could just use scraps of paper. In addition to new ways to get points or rule changes, they all have a number. You use three to a game and the sum of their numbers are your goal for the game.

Just like roads give you headaches in Spawlopolis, black pyramids are there to make life difficult. They are worth negative points. Each one costs its size multiplied by the number of pyramids around it. Which doesn’t sound that bad but the bad stuff piles up fast.

You score the largest group of each color, the special scoring conditions and subtract the black pyramids and hope you win.

There are two questions that Zoning Out has to answer: Is it any good and of itself? Would I rather play it than Sprawlopolis? From where I’m standing, Zoning Out is a good game but Sprawlopolis is better.

You ultimately have more control in Zoning Out. Each move is only dealing with one square while Sprawlopolis has you juggling four at a time. You decide what size pyramid you’re pulling. And you know that all forty-five pyramids are going to be in your city. 

Sprawlopolis was a game changer. Zoning Out reflects that. Sprawlopolis has inspired expansions and spinoffs. Zoning Out doesn’t have the breadth to do that. It is a solid tribute though.

The Daily Weather just keeps delivering

 I think The Daily Weather was designed with me in mind.

The Daily Weather is a solitaire tile-laying game where the really clever bit is that it generates a different goal for every day on the calendar. It's also short enough that, in theory, you could easily play it over a cup of coffee. The designer specifically mentions the New York Times daily puzzles as an inspiration and I can clearly see where they were coming from.

The cards are chibi as all get out. The cards you actually play with are two-by-three grids with what I'm going to call emoji weather symbols because if I call them that, you know exactly what I'm talking about. I almost never worry about color printing or getting a published copy of a game but I am sorely tempted to do that just because the cards would look so cute.

There are double-sided cards for the months and days of the year. Using ones for your current date (or another date, there's no reason why not), you use them as a base for the game. Using six double-sided cards, you try to cover all the months and days except for the date you're playing for. The placement rules are that you have to cover at least matching symbol when you place the card. In addition, you have to complete a designated pattern of symbols. If you do all that, you win the game and can figure out if you get any points.

But here's where it gets cool. There is a separate set of cards for the days of the week, which week of the month and what season it is. (Since this is a game you can play anywhere, it works whether or not you are in the northern hemisphere or the southern hemisphere) They will determine how you set up the month and day cards for your game base, what pattern you have to create to win, and what the scoring conditions are if you win. 

There are plenty of rule details I skipped over but I think I've given you enough of an idea to know if this would even interest you.

I was part of the large playtesting crew for the Daily Weather and it still boggles my mind how much development had to go into making the game work for every possible date. I try not to go into my play testing experiences in any kind of detail but I will say the Daily Weather was one the few games that I fit into testing during my lunch breaks. Part of that is because it is short and part of that is because I enjoyed that much.

Experience helps but some dates are definitely harder than others to beat. When I first started playing the Daily Weather, I was happy if I could get the month and the date. I still usually have to play a setup at least a couple times to beat it. And actually scoring points if I win, that's just taunting me at this point. Which isn't to say that the game is frustrating but that it is properly challenging. And that I'm probably very bad at it but it's a solitaire so it's all good.

The Daily Weather is a very puzzly game but you are only using six of the twelve possible card faces (the cards are double-sided but you don't flip them) and they come out in a random order. For me, that lets the Daily Weather cross the line from puzzle to game. And it is possible to get the wrong cards in the wrong order to create an impossible combination but you never know until you try. And you usually have time to try again.  

I have tried a lot of coffee break style of games since I got into PnP. And a number of them have ended up in my regular rotation. And the Daily Weather is one of the best I have found. It offers a wide variety of challenges and, at least for me, they are challenging. It manages to make placing six cards interesting and that is not an easy thing. And I can fail three times in a row in one cup of coffee.

The Daily Weather is worth daily play. 

I go to the beginning of Maigret

 It had been a couple months since I had read one of Georges Simenon's Maigret books so I decided it was time to go back to them. More than that, I decided I should read the first one. The copy I read was called Pietr the Latvian but it has also been published as The Strange Case of Peter the Lett and Maigret and the Enigmatic Lett, and each one was by a different translator. 

I think, when it comes to serial characters (characters who are the protagonists of several individual stories, as opposed to one distinct story. Superman compared to Frodo Baggins, for example (yes, I’m stealing the term from Robin Laws) ), I don't think it's necessary or even wise to start with the first work. Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe mysteries are a series I routinely go back to but I don't know if I had started with Fer De Lance if it would have sold me on the books.

Pietr the Latvian isn't as extreme a case but I am glad that I started with one of the later books, Maigret’s Dead Man. At that point, Simenon had clearly gotten a very defined idea of who Jules Maigret was and how he operated. To be sure, Maigret is still very realized in Petr the Latvian. This isn't an case of you can see the seeds of the character to come. It's the sapling of the character to come.

I did have much more of a sense of Maigret's physical presence in this first book, as opposed to his emotional, intellectual presence. In the later books, I was never struck by the fact that Maigret is big slab of a human being while this first outing never lets me forget that. I have read some folks compare Maigret to Hercule Poirot, which I think is a stretch, but it's an even farther stretch at their starts. 

That being said, many of the elements that got me hooked on Maigret are already in place. The descriptions of places and people are very grounded and realistic. More than that, there is a strong psychological element to both the book and Maigret's methods. While Maigret is willing to use footprints and cigarette ashes to figure things out, he is much more about getting into the head of a suspect right out of the gate.

Pietr the Latvian has more of a noir vibe that the other two Maigret books that I have read. Maigret gets shot around the middle of the book and just powers through that in order to continue the investigation for crying out loud. That feels more like something Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett would write. (I'd have to go back and look but I'm sure Hammett's Continental Op has done that more than once) To be fair, the book was written when both those guys were active. 

And the title character who is also the central antagonist is more of a larger-than-life bad guy compared to my previous reads. Not a super villain (and, yes, there’s a big twist to his nature) but not a realistically grounded character.

To be fair, Simenon wrote seventy-five books in the series, along with over a dozen short stories. I have read far too small a sampling to speak authoritatively about what Maigret and his stories are really like. However, despite what I think is some early installment weirdness, Pietr the Latvian just wants me to keep on reading.