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.