Paper App Dungeon’s flaws make more sense to me… but they are still flaws

While my interest in Gladden Design’s PnP products was primarily on their Paper Apps Golf and Galaxy, I knew I would have to start with Dungeon. Because I also knew I probably wouldn’t try it if I didn’t get it out of the way first.

Paper Dungeon App is a very, very simple dungeon crawl. Each dungeon floor is a 12x12 grid (not counting the framing outer wall) with inner walls, monsters, treasures and traps. You roll a D6. You draw a line to show your path, moving the number of squares you roll. You start off diagonal on odd numbers and orthogonal on even ones. You only change direction if you hit a wall, not unlike Ricochet Robots.

If you pass through or end on an object, you interact with it. Hearts add to your life, with this version of the game having a 25 heart cap. Coins and treasure chests add to your money. Monsters subtract health. Spiderwebs stop you and subtract coins. And there are teleport warps.

There are 45 floors in the dungeon. Periodically, in between floors, there is a shop where you can spend those coins on an increasingly powerful set of one shot items.

Okay, Paper App Dungeon was designed to be carried around as a little spiral notebook. Potentially played while standing in line. And there are elements in the game that are clearly built around that mission statement which get in the way of, well, making the game more deep or interesting.

The biggest example of that is how there are no combat rules. Monsters subtract from your hit points. End of story. To be honest, if this was themed around something like cyberpunk net hacking, I think it would work better. Black Ice eating up processing memory, that sort of thing. A dungeon crawl without combat is just plain awkward.

I don’t have a problem with this but I have to note how the game is also designed for you to do all of the paperwork after you complete a floor. Monsters cannot kill you on the spot. After you finish a floor, you add up all of the hearts you got and subtract the monsters to find out if you’re still alive. Again, that’s clearly part of the goal to make the game as simple and portable as possible. And, unlike the lack of combat, I don’t have a problem with this. I just find it kind of interesting.

From what I can tell, paper app dungeon has had a few rules revisions. At least one version stated that you had to pick a direction that wouldn’t have you hit walls if you could and that you couldn’t backtrack or cross over your path if possible. Which would eliminate most of your decision-making ability. The rule set on the PDF version doesn’t have a rule about avoiding walls and just says not to backtrack on the same move if you can help it.

(Also, the printed version had procedurally generated floors, so each one would be different. Not necessarily balanced. The PDF version seems to be designed with balance in mind.)

To my surprise, the PDF version has improved my opinion of the game compared to the demo I earlier tried. More detailed rules is a big part of that. Smaller rooms with a lot more chances to pinball around also helped. I also decided that, even after a couple floors, playing the game as a campaign (which, to be fair, is what it is designed to be) is the only way to make it interesting. Treating a floor as a stand-alone game just doesn’t give me enough.

Paper App Dungeon is still painfully barebones and simple. I still feel that the lack of combat is a major thematic dissonance. Bad die rolls can make your path a tangled mess. However, seeing the game in its proper context does make me appreciate more what it’s trying to do.

While I will only play it when I’m in a brain fog situation, I can see myself completing the campaign. However, I am enjoying and playing the other two Paper App games more.

Dr Finn crunches some numbers

Crunch the Numbers is part of Dr. Finn’s Book of Solo Strategy and Word Games. I am going to get so tired of typing that name out by the time I get to the last game in it. That said, Steve Finn does design a good game so I’m glad to have the PDF of the book.

Crunch the Numbers consists of three 4x4 grids. And each column and row has a scoring condition. Every number being odd or even or different or the same or being smaller than a given number. And if you fill out a row or column properly, you get points and, in a couple of them, a one-shot dice manipulation.

Oh, gameplay consists of rolling three dice in writing a number in each of the grids. When they’re full, the game is over and you figure out your score.

Crunch the Numbers was the first game in the book I tried. Honestly, because it looked like the simplest game and a quick way to start. (As I’ve continued through the book, it honestly isn’t the mechanically simplest but it was still a good place to begin)

Filling out a grid and having the numbers have to fit within specific requirements, that’s nothing new. I am not even sure if filling out multiple grids at the same time is all that new.

However, as I routinely say, innovation is not a requirement for quality. You don’t need to make a new wheel in order to make a really good bicycle. Steve Finn has taken pre-existing elements and put them together into a package that is accessible, interesting and fun.

I have steadily been going through Dr. Finn’s Book of Solo Strategy and Word Games and I am not seeing a collection of games that are about breaking new ground. I see a collection of games that are easy to learn and that I think people will enjoy playing.

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.