What did Enid Blyton just do to my brain?

I decided to read The Enchanted Forest by Enid Blyton just because Noel Fielding and a home baker mentioned it in the Great British Bake-Off.

Enid Blyton is an interesting author. She was a one-woman writing machine who wrote literally hundreds of children’s books that have been cultural touchstones in England and other countries for generations. She has also been accused of being classist, sexist, racist to the point of xenophobic and having a writing style that is simplistic drivel. 

I’ve only read a couple of her books but, from the tiny representation I’ve read, yeah, that sounds about right.

Her work honestly reads like Victorian kiddy books but they were written and published in a post-Edwardian world. Heck, most of it was written after World War II so it doesn’t have the ‘fair for its day’ excuse. As for the writing style, I have read far more than any healthy human should of the Stratemeyer Syndicate’s books. They are the epitome of literary extruded matter and the writing is still better. (I don’t have a problem believing Blyton did all the writing herself without any ghost writers, though)

And, yes, I understand that a big part of her appeal is a yearning for a simpler, more innocent time that never actually existed. She’s also easy to read for very young readers. But those aren’t necessarily good things.

Okay. Enough bashing Enid Blyton in general. The Enchanted Forest.

Three kids move to the countryside and just happen to end up next to a magical forest. The highlight of the forest is the Faraway Tree, which is an interdimensional portal. Basically, the top of the tree pokes into other worlds. So the kids wander into other worlds and have silly adventures. That’s pretty much the book in a nutshell.

All right. A few years ago, I decided to read every fantasy work that L. Frank Baum wrote. Which mean that I read Dot and Tot of Merryland, which was one of the most twee things I had ever read. At that time. It made The Waterbabies look like Paradise Lost. I could literally write an essay making a point by point comparison how Dot and Tot has better characterization, plot structure and world building than The Enchanted Forest.

I don’t expect deep characters in a book for the young but not only are the three kids virtually interchangeable, they have a disturbing lack of any sense of self-preservation even for free-range kids in a nursery tale fantasy land. But the mom letting them go off with an inhabitant of the tree, even though he’s a stranger who she openly doesn’t trust, takes the cake. That crossed the line from ‘it was a different time’ to ‘wow, that’s horrible parenting.’

If there was a story arc, I couldn’t find it. After the kids find the Faraway Tree and understand how it works, it’s like Enid Blyton used a random encounter chart to write the rest of the book. If the book had been published in installments, I wouldn’t be surprised at all.

The one-note magical lands don’t actually bother me as far as world building is coming concerned. The answer to any questions I have is ‘magic did it’ and that works perfectly fine. They still push the one-note element father than I think I have ever seen. Each world is literally one thing, as well as apparently only a few acres big.

The Enchanted Forest is so vapid that I actually wondered if that was the point, that the book was a parody of the genre. Unfortunately, from what I can tell, that wasn’t the case. I was hoping for light distraction but got morbid fascination instead. 

And, yes, I will probably read the next book.

My first two reactions to online conventions

From what I can tell, in-person conventions across the board have been canceled for the year. Some, like GenCon and Pax are going to be free, online experiences instead.

While I fully support this, I don’t know how interested I am in attending a virtual convention. I already play games online, shop for games online and watch videos and vlogs about gaming online. I’m not sure how an online convention would be really different than what I already do on a regular basis.

That said, I still remember when I first found out about BSW (a site where you could play mostly European board games. It’s still around but I’m pretty sure it’s not nearly as big as it was back when dinosaurs roamed the earth when I first discovered it. Virtual gaming has come a long, long way.) I felt like I was at a convention while sitting in front of my computer and that was _amazing_

And in 2017, I discovered GenCan’t, the virtual convention for those who couldn’t make it to GenCon. It was a scrappy little event that felt like more like a movement than an event. The 2017 design contest alone forever changed how I look at Roll and Write games and dragged me even deeper into the world Print and Play. 

Both BSW and GenCan’t changed gaming for me. Both were fantastic experiences for me.

There is definitely a real effect of being part of something that isn’t just me and three other people playing Carcassonne online but something that involves a community that stretches around the world. My first, gut reaction forgot that.

I don’t know how much or if at all I’ll participate in online conventions but I have realized that I shouldn’t rule them out.

L. Sprague de Camp’s Reluctant King isn’t perfect but it is soothing

I have definitely been reaching for decompressing books during the COVID-19 lockdown and continued partial lockdown. And L. Sprauge de Camp (along with Rex Stout) has been someone who has been one of my main fallbacks.

While it is true that de Camp wrote a lot of light hearted and funny stuff, the best word that I found myself coming back to, again and again, is charming. He creates worlds that might be strange and dangerous but somehow are still all right in the end. 

After reading several of his short stories, I decided that this was due time to finally read his Reluctant King trilogy, which I remember almost picking up at the library when I was young. 

The books chronicle the misadventures of Jorian of Xylar. He accidentally became the king of Xylar by catching the decapitated head of the last king. You see, Xylar only keeps kings for five years before cutting their heads off and chucking the head into the crowd to choose the next one. The very first chapter describes how Jorian escapes when it’s his turn to lose his head.

As a side note, I could not help but think of Jorian as a bard whose player had cheated and rolled straight 18s for stats. He’s a dabbler in absolutely every craft and will tell stories at the drop of a hat.

Throughout the three books, Jorian does his best to evade Xylar forces who want to drag him back for the beheading, try and get his favorite wife out of Xylar and just deal with the never ending adventures that inevitably fall in his lap. The books are one half rollicking fantasy adventure And one half political satire. The balance isn’t always even. The first book leans more towards adventure while the last one leans more towards satire. I was afraid halfway through the last book that the book would get bogged down about lawsuits. 

Frankly, the trilogy is kind of an odd read and not de Camp’s best. At the same time, I’d say this is also the ambitious thing I've read by him. At the end of the day, the moral is just ‘there is no good idea that greed and corruption can’t mess up’ but de Camp definitely explores that idea. And, seeing how this is de Camp, things ultimately do work out for Jorian. Which as much spoiler as I’ll give.

The Reluctant King trilogy was actually a great read as far as stress-coping was concerned. On the one hand, yes, it was relentlessly cynical. On the other hand, optimism ran through the books as well. The second moral was: ‘Yeah, people can be jerks but, eh, they’re basically okay too’

A free solitaire from Friedemann Friese?

The biggest value of 5x15 might be that it let me find out that Friedemann Friese has been keeping a lockdown blog :D

https://boardgamegeek.com/blog/10109

Anyway, 5x15 is a free solitaire game that the good Mister Friese has given to the world during this time when Covid-19 has us all spending a lot more time inside and away from gaming groups.

The game consists of 75 tiles, fifteen tiles in in five different colors. You lay them out in a five by fifteen grid and then pull out the ones and place them on the ends, creating five gaps in the grid. The goal of the game is to sort the tiles by color and into ascending order. You have two types of moves. You can move a tile into a gap if it is either one more than the tile to its left or one less than the tile to its right AND the same color. You can also shift three or more tiles to the right if they are the same color, in numeric order and 15 is at the end.

5x15 is a solid example of a solitaire puzzle game that feels like it’s been around forever. Getting numbers sorted and filling in gaps and sliding the tiles around, all the elements are comfortable and familiar. The good Mister Friese didn’t create something innovative. Instead, he made something a little bit new with ideas that have been lying around for generations. If you enjoy this sort of puzzle game, mechanically it works just dandy.

But there are implementation issues.

Some of these might be my issues but the fact that you are setting up and dealing with 75 tiles creates some physical issues. While it fortunately takes longer to play than to set up, the setup feels time consuming for the amount of play you get. And it takes up what can be a prohibitively large amount of space. I made one inch square tiles. Any smaller than I’d have issues moving the tiles around.

For me, when I play a quick, little solitaire game, convenience is a premium. Which is why I look into so many in-hand solitaire card games. The physical issues make 5x15 inconvenient for what I get out of the game. Friese mentioned that the game might make a good app and that would actually solve all my issues with the game.

5x15 isn’t a great game. It’s an activity to zone out with, like Klondike or Mine Sweeper, and it does a decent job at that. It doesn’t hold a candle to Friese’s earlier solitaire game Friday but I don’t think it is meant to and it is free. Free can make a lot forgivable :D 

Should a preschool cartoon make me feel this cynical?

Our six-year-old spent a couple days binging on the Rainbow Rangers cartoon, even though he’s a little old for it.

It’s basically a preschool version of Captain Planet and the Planeteers with that CGI that makes all the characters look like they are made of plastic. It does have a theme song that has the ear worm of any three given Eurovision entries combined. Honestly, neither of his parents think much of it.

However, there is one thing about the show that I find striking. The closest thing the show has to a villain is morally dubious businessman Preston Praxton, who makes Mayor Humdinger from Paw Patrol look like Doctor Doom. Quite a bit of the time, the heroes thwart him by giving him a financially viable alternative to his environmentally devastating ways.

Okay, the tv show is for a younger audience so peaceful conflict resolution is part of the package. And, as an educational, environmental show, showing alternatives and not just saying pollution is bad is pretty important.

However, the extent that the heroes help him out is sometimes astonishing to me. In one story, they agreed to actually flat-out manufacture an alternative fishing net that was safer for turtles. Another time, they agreed to let him photograph them instead of wild animals. (I know it wasn’t meant to be creepy but they are nine-year-old girls!)

I honestly feel that the show leans towards teaching that industry and business are at least as important as saving the planet. I’m not sure if that’s a bad thing. I think appealing to enlightened self-interest may result in change, while appealing to altruism might not.

Should a program for preschoolers make me feel so jaded and cynical?

Trying to make This Town et al ‘work’

I have very mixed feelings about This Town Ain’t Big For the 2-4 of Us. 

I backed the game on Kickstarter back in 2004, right when my interest in micro games was really kicking in. And, in theory, I still think it’s a great idea for a micro game. Twenty-four tiles with the symbols printed on them so you don’t need separate meeples. And I still think think the scoring system is really neat and leads to interesting choices.

In a nutshell, it’s a tile-laying game with fences and symbols printed on the tiles. Everyone has a symbol for their own. When an area is enclosed by fences, you score it. Here’s how that works. Whatever symbol has the greatest number of symbols in the area gets points equal to the number of second greatest symbols. And so on until whoever has the fewest symbols gets no points. 

The scoring system doesn’t just make for interesting decisions. It also means that drawing a tile that doesn’t have your symbol isn’t a useless turn. Instead, any given tile has the potential to be useful to you.

The idea of a Carcassonne experience distilled down to 24 tiles that can fit it in any given pocket is a really compelling one for me. One of the major draws of a micro game is as a travel game. And there are elements of This Town et al that make it its own, distinct experience.

Buuuut... there are problems.

In my experience, there have been runaway leader problems. With only 24 tiles, when someone gets a lead, they have a good chance of fighting to protect it until the tiles run out. The game play doesn’t live up to the potential This Town et al seems to have.

An additional problem I had with the published version is that it came with a bunch of expansions that used itty, bitty tokens, along with a scoring stick that also had itty bitty tokens. The value I got out of not having meeples was taken away by having much more fiddly tokens.

And since I got This Town et al, I’ve found more the one game that fit into the niche of micro tile-laying game. The print-and-play Autumn and HUE from the Pack O Games both address the issues I had with This Town et al.

However, I still want to make it work.

So I have made a beater copy of the PnP version. (Yes, I could just pull the tiles out of the published edition but making a PnP copy just felt cleaner.) Strip the game down to its absolute basics, which also solves the travel problem.  I don’t know if that will make the game ‘work’ for me but I want to give it another try.

My June PnP

June has gone past. 2020 is halfway done and it’s been a year that will go down in the history books. Print and Play has helped me pretend to be sane. This is what I made in June:

Food Chain Island 

King of the Gauntler (2020 9-Card Contest)

GIA isn’t Abstract (2017 9-Card Contest)

8-Bit Dungeon (2020 9-Card Contest)

MiniSkull Caverns (2016 9-Card Contest)

Charles vs Peter (2020 9-Card Contest)

Battle for the Carolinas

Astolfo on the Moon (2020 9-Card Contest)

Wurfel Bingo

Rollands

This Town Ain’t Big Enough for the 2-4 of Us

I did some housecleaning in June, finally trimming some nine cards games I had laminated months ago, as well as making more copies of Wurfel Bingo and Rollands to use unused space on laminating sheets.

My monthly ‘big’ project was Battle for the Carolinas. Sadly, I have not yet taken the time to find the fifteen, twenty minutes to learn and play it. I’m hoping to correct that because a war-themed Palm Island sounds really interesting.

So the highlight of my PnP was Food Chain Island. It’s a very promising start to a new line of simple, solitaire games. It is a very rewarding return for five-minutes of game time.

All in all, a good halfway point for my PnP year.