What if you held a convention for no one to come?

I enthusiastically follow ButtonShy and I was surprised when I saw a BGG listing for a game series called ShyCon that I’d never heard of. I wondered if it was designed to be a convention you could hold in your living room or by yourself.

Spoiler: it’s none of those things. It’s the goodie bag for ShyCon, Button Shy’s convention. That, despite paying so much attention to the company, I didn’t know existed lol

My intitial impressions have still stuck with me. Including wondering how they would even work as a concept.

I mean, how would a convention in your living room be any different than a regular game night? Have a computer set up in the corner to simulate the dealer hall by people shopping online in between games?

Now, a solitaire convention. That’s actually something I’ve participated in. Gen Can’t was essentially that. 

I first found out about GenCan’t from its 2017 Roll and Write contest where every game had to have a solitaire option or even just be a solitaire. I also participated one year in the mass Karuba game. And I’m sure there have been plenty of online conventions I’ve never heard of.

Honestly, when I first discovered BSW many years ago, it felt like I had discovered an online convention.

So, what would a physical product look like that was designed to be some kind of solitaire convention? 

First of all, it would need some kind of online connection. A way for everyone to be able to plug-in, albeit possibly not at the same time. It would need solitaire games that have scores, so people could compare how well they did with other people. And I think it would be also good to have a Take It Easy style-game so the developers could post a series of moves and attendance could have an experience like the Karuba one mentioned earlier.

Honest, I think a collection of three to five games would be a good number to keep it manageable. I don’t want to actually organize anything but it would be an interesting thought experiment.

And I’m sure it’s already been done.

Terry Pratchett and the value of Small Gods

The ending of the video game The Last Campfire reminded me of Terry Pratchett’s Small Gods. Which made me decide that it was time for me to reread Small Gods.

Which was significant for me because I haven’t been able to bring myself to read Pratchett since he passed away in 2015.

Terry Pratchett has been my favorite author for my adult life. (Daniel Pinkwater was my childhood favorite author) I’ve been reading him long enough that, starting with the third Discworld book, I was reading the books as they came out. (And, no, I have not yet read The Shepherd’s Crown, the last book and published posthumously)

Small Gods was the thirteenth books in the series and, by that point, Pratchett had definitely his stride. (There are plenty of arguments about what book was the watershed point of Pratchett becoming an insightful and compassionate satirist) When I was in college, Small Gods was the book to hand people to get them hooked on Pratchett. Which may say more about who I hung out with in college than the book.

Small Gods is Pratchett’s treatise on religion. Which honestly breaks down to people should be nice and considerate to each other. However, Pratchett also discusses how complex and difficult actually doing that really is. 

(I’m not going to go into the actual plot because I want everyone to go out and read Small Gods for themselves)

Small Gods is a good example of how Pratchett didn’t write escapist fantasy or comedy but critically considered discussions about humanity.

Cosmic Run: Mission One feels bigger than a piece of paper

At its heart, Cosmic Run: Mission One is a Roll and Move, along with being a Roll and Write. While Roll and Move is often derided as a mechanic by those who have forgotten Backgammon, Cosmic Run uses multiple pawns and dice manipulation to make sure there’s actual gameplay.

Cosmic Run: Mission One is a Roll and Write solitaire from Dr. Finn’s Book of Solitaire Strategy and Word Games. It’s also the only game in the book that Steve Finn writes cannot work as a multiplayer solitaire.

You are trying to reach four different planets before your AI opponent reach them. The play sheet consists of four planet tracks and a column of special powers that you have to earn before you can use.

Each track actually has the planet in the middle with you coming from one side and the AI enemy coming from the other. Each track on your side has a specific requirement, like three of kind needed to move/mark off a space. There are six special powers in the column, one for each pip. They range from reroll a die to change a die to any pip.

Each turn, you roll four dice. You always have to assign a die but you can reroll the rest so you get up to four rolls without using special powers. Dice can be assigned to planet tracks or special powers to earn said powers.

After you’ve assigned and resolved your dice (which can end up doing nothing if you couldn’t fulfill a track’s requirement), you roll one die for the AI. The AI spaces have numbers on them, sometimes two. If your die roll matches one (or more!) of the number at the next space of an AI track, cross it off. If it doesn’t match, you choose which track to cross off a space on.

If the AI reaches a planet first, you either lose points depending on how far along you are for that planet or lose outright if you aren’t far enough. When all four planets are claimed, the game ends. You gain points for claimed planets and unused powers and lose them for AI-claimed planets.

I haven’t played any of Dr. Finn’s other Cosmic Run games but Cosmic Run: Mission Run definitely feels like a game that started out as not-a-Roll-and-Write. And I do like it when R&Ws stretch the medium, although it’s long past the point where anyone should be surprised when R&Ws aren’t just Yahtzee clones.

The game is remarkably accessible, in large part because it uses so many concepts and mechanics that are part of the building blocks of board games. At the same time, it manages to also be its own thing. And easy to understand doesn’t mean easy to win.

Cosmic Run: Mission One does a bang up job at both being a Roll and Move game without actually having any physical pawns and while giving you choices. It’s short and ultimately simple but feels bigger than a piece of paper and some dice.

Roll and Reanimate does not make me feel lively

I’m just going to start out by saying that I did not enjoy Roll and Reanimate. 

And a good chunk of that lack of enjoyment had to do with rules ambiguities. Even worse, I was able to figure out quite a bit of what I think the designer wanted to tell me because I have played a lot of roll and write games. I think that it would have been an even worse experience for someone who wasn’t familiar with these kinds of mechanics.

The idea behind the game is that you are trying to create your own Frankenstein monster. Or, as the rules, describe your potential creation.  Franken-dice monster. I’m a dad. I dig dad jokes. Works for me.

The core of the game is dice drafting. Each player has their own pool of six dice and there is one Franken-die for the whole group. You can roll your own pool of dice multiple times, but you have to set aside at least one die in your laboratory each roll. And the first player to scream ‘Eureka’ gets to draft the Franken-die but they can’t draft any more dice.

There are three main parts of the play sheet: a mob track, the monster and the coil. Each body part on the monster has six boxes, each part with a specific die pip. 

You can spend three or more of the same pip to work on a body part. A run of three dice lets you improve the power coil. You can also discard dice to adjust other dice, reduce decomposition (which I’m not going to go into but makes sense as a mechanic) or erase check marks on the mob track.

If you complete the monster, you get a chance each turn to bring it to life. Roll all six dice and get at least the number of sixes on the coil to win.

The mob track basically makes your life difficult. Every unused die you have and every turn you don’t adds to the coil checks off boxes in the track. As the track fills up, you lose dice when you try to bring your monster to life. And when the track completely fills, you lose.

At least, I am very sure that’s how the game plays. I found the rules a bit murky and I have a lot of practice reading rules. And I also often read prototype rules that aren’t the final version for publication and they are usually better than this.

I also played the game solitaire and that’s where the real confusion kicked in. When playing solitaire, you are to mark off the mob space on the number of the Franken-die. Does that mean you mark off spaces irregularly and how does that affect the penalty? 

You also take a two mob box penalty if you use the Frankenstein-die but that makes sense. After all, there’s no competition for it. That rule also applies to large group play (but large group play doesn’t have the other penalty)

Not only is the first penalty confusing, it also doesn’t seem balanced. It’s not like playing solitaire makes the game any easier, other than no competition for the Franken-die and the other penalty accounts for that.

Honestly, Roll and Reanimate has the bones of a good game. However, it desperately needs at least a good copy editor to straighten out the rules and make them clear.

To add to my displeasure, it was a Kickstarter project, meaning I did pay for it. Not much but I am a _lot_ more forgiving of a free download or a contest entry. The moment you ask me to treat a download as a piece of merchandise, I expect the standards of a piece of merchandise.

I do think there’s a decent game hidden in Roll and Reanimate. However, I have a big backlog of games that I haven’t tried yet and a bunch of games I enjoy and want to replay. I don’t think I’ll be going back to Roll and Reanimate.

K-Pop Demon Hunters made me cry like it was a Pixar film

After enough people recommended it to us, we watched K-Pop Demon Hunters as a family. I mean, a work called K-Pop Demon Hunters would have to be pretty bad for _me_ not to like it.

But I’m going to argue it’s pretty good.

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I went in expecting fun songs and the movie had them. I was expecting stylized but strong animation. Yup. Solid and emotional voice acting? Had that too.

In other words, I went in expecting high production quality and I got it.

But that’s not what I want to talk about.

The actual plot structure was pretty boilerplate. You knew the girls were going to fall apart and get back together stronger. You knew the handsome demon boy would redeem himself. You knew the heroes would win and save the world.

But the individual beats were very strong. The way K-Pop Demon Hunters kept raising the stakes and convincing you to buy into the stakes? That’s good stuff.

At the start of the film, I was more invested in Mira and Zoey than I was in the protagonist Rumi. The other two hunters felt like they had more interesting quirks and personalities.

However, as Rumi was steadily developed as not just a workaholic but a half-demon whose demonic heritage was becoming more prominent, the film got me behind her as a protagonist. As the film explored the issues and traumas and flaws that her heritage brought her, it just kept making her a better character.

In Pocahontas and Moana, right before the finale, the protagonists meet with their maternal teachers who support them. In contrast, Rumi meets with her teacher and surrogate mother Celine before the final battle and their relationship completely falls apart. It’s a powerful scene and sets up Rumi having to go face the king of demons all alone. 

We all knew that she was going to turn it around but they really brought her low before she could start winning.

Two works ran through my head while we watched the movie. Equestria Girls: Rainbow Rocks (which makes sense since magic and music) and the web comic Sleepless Domain. A love letter and deconstruction to the magic girl genre, Sleepless Domain becomes much darker than it seems while remaining sweet, similar to K-Pop Demon Hunters.

Yeah, we all agreed we understood why people love K-Pop Demon Hunters.

My Perfect City uses familiar ideas to challenge us

My Perfect City from Dr. Finn’s Book of Solitaire Strategy and Word Games is an example of drawing a map on a grid. Between published Roll and Writes and design contests, I feel like I have seen dozens of games that could be described that way.

However, I also remember when I first saw Welcome to Dino World back in 2017, I felt like someone had handed me Carcassonne on a sheet of paper. That was when I really realized that the medium of Roll and Write could be so much more than different flavors of Yahtzee.

So, what does My Perfect City do to make it stand out and make it worth playing?

You are filling in a six by six grid with five different symbols/city areas (which are government buildings, banks, parks, houses and apartments, by the way) They each have their own scoring conditions and any empty spaces at the end of the game are negative points.

Okay, that’s all pretty boilerplate. So what did Steve Finn do to make My Perfect City interesting?

What I have normally seen is a symbol assigned to a die pip. In My Perfect City, each pip has three sets of symbols in specific shapes, made of one to four squares, each unit called a tile. (If that sounds confusing, it automatically makes sense when you see it)

The first placement has to touch the edge of the grid. Every placement after that has to touch a previously placed tile. And you are not allowed to flip or rotate the tiles, except through one-shot powers. There are three one-shot powers, letting you flip a tile horizontally, vertically or remove a square.

You cross off a tile when you use it. If you have crossed off every shape in a pip, you can pick any remaining tile when you roll that number. When no more tiles will fit, the game ends and you figure out your score.

So. What makes My Perfect City stand out, what makes it work? I’m going to say the variety of different tiles. 

It’s definitely an example of limitations and restrictions creating tough choices and tension. The board becomes claustrophobic. While there are eighteen tiles, the total number of squares in those eighteen is greater than the board. You can’t use every one.

That makes My Perfect City less granular. You don’t slowly fill up the board, square by square. Each move dynamically changes the board. You don’t have as many moves as you would if every tile was only one square but that means the decisions are bigger.

And that does make My Perfect City enjoyable and worth playing. The elements may be familiar but they are crafted into a thoughtful, engaging experience.

Shut the Box has a place in pubs and toy boxes

 I was surprised to see I’d never written about Shut the Box, even though it’s one of these games that I’ve played every once in a blue moon for years. 

Shut the Box is one of those pub games that can be played when you are blind drunk and the components can survive having drinks spilled all over them. There are different versions of the game but they all break down to rolling dice and flipping over numbered levers equal to the sum of the dice.

The classic version of the game has the levers in an actual box that you can close if you flip over all the levers. However, I have also seen instructions to just write the numbers on a sheet of paper and cover them with buttons. (That was in a book of kids games) 

I first came across it as a heritage edition-style game that was bigger than a Ticket to Ride box. The back, which also included the rules, said that the game originated on fishing boats where it could be played despite waves. Which is a delightful story but I haven’t actually found any evidence to back to up. It was a charming and pretty object but that couldn’t hide that there’s really not much to Shut the Box and it didn’t stay in my collection for long.

When you get past the novelty of flipping the levers, Shut the Box doesn’t offer very much. When you compare it to other pub-style dice games, like Farkle, it barely has a decision tree. The game makes more sense when you figure that its origins are in gambling. Money on the line always makes things more interesting. 

Despite that, I have gotten in the odd play, be it online or a simpler homemade copy since that heritage edition took up too much space on the game shelf. There is an odd fascination to Shut the Box for me, particularly as a historical item.

Recently, I made a set of Shut the Box cards because it amused me. More than anything else, it reminded why I don’t play it much. Yes, I play  brain fog games that I can play in a daze but Shut the Box is really too slight for even that. But a tiny handful of cards is something I can keep around.

Shut the Box is a game that will probably never be in my wheelhouse but it seems to have kept it’s home as a pub game and found one as a children’s game.