Ending the year with a little bit of Jerome K Jerome

I decided to cap off my 2019 reading by reading Told After Supper by Jerome K Jerome. The only thing I’ve previously read by him is Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog), which is one of those classics of the English language that I think everyone should read. This tiny little novella doesn’t rise to the same heights but it does come from the same place.

Boy but the Victorians loved their ghosts stories. If the collections of ghost stories from that era are anything to go by, it was a national mania. And Christmas ghost stories sure seemed to be a big going concern. Dickens sure helped encourage that.

Told After Supper is allegedly the stories and experiences of some men telling ghost stories around the fire on Christmas Eve. Except that it’s really about them drinking so much Christmas punch that they can’t walk in straight line.

It’s not the first sendup of the Victorian Ghost Story I’ve read. Oscar Wilde’s The Canterville Ghost at least starts off as one and the criminally underrated John Kendrick Bangs wrote some fun ones. I particularly liked one about having a ghost who made chills go down the spine being asked to stay in as air conditioning. 

Told After Supper has the same rambling style that Three Men has. It has a very conversational tone and seems to go nowhere but it’s a fun journey to that nowhere. It doesn’t feel as timeless as Three Men but I’m glad I found out it existed and I read it.

Dunsany Dreams 14

Spring’s Music

When the crocus bloom and the snow is only left in piles of weeping slush, the sing of spring begins. It is a song without words and the music is hidden. Yet, it is everywhere, carried by the merry winds and full of the rich, raw smells of wet mud and fresh grass.

The song dances in between the trees and whispers to  green buds that are beginning in the branches. The sing dances in the meadows, making the young grass bo and bend. The birds, still coming back from the south, know the sing of spring and so do the waking creatures in their burrows and beds.

Spring is here. The winter has gone and life has been renewed,

And in the little streams that wind their way to the rivers and then to the sea, black sludge flows.

2019 Print and Play Solitaire Contest was a delightful holiday experience

I am finally getting around to looking at this year’s Solitaire Print and Play Contest. Oddly enough, it’s not a contest I’ve look at as much, mostly because I focused on micro games when I started really hunting for PnP files. It also took me a bit to get into solitaire games.

But design contests are an awesome place to look for PnP tiles. Not only are they a one-stop hunting ground, other people have vetted the designs for you. Plus, the Work in Progress (WiP) threads often offer a lot of insight in the development.

I have been focused on contests like  nine or eighteen card contests or Roll and Write contests or mint tin contests. So looking at a no holds, do what you want contest was a different kind of experience. I looked at games designed to be used with a regular deck of cards, micro games, Roll and Write games and games that would be major builds to make.

The nine contest is still my favorite design contest (and I sure hope there is one coming up for 2020) but, having not looked at a contest in a bit, the 2019 solitaire  was a fun smorgasbord of games and surprise holiday trip.

https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2230787/2019-solitaire-print-and-play-contest

Solitaire Spellbook Swapping is itty bitty but nifty

There was a game in the 2018 9-Card PnP Contest called Akur-Gal that consists of swapping cards on a 3x3 grid to complete a Sumerian tablet. It still holds the record for the slightest PnP that held me interest at all. I really think of it more as an activity than a game but it has worked well for me as a mental coffee break.

Solitaire Spellbook Swapping (SSS) from the 2019 Solitaire Contest takes the idea of swapping cards on a 3x3 grid and actually turns it into a game, at least by my lights.

The game consists of nine cards numbered one through nine with each book being a wizard’s spellbook. You need to put them in the right order, sorting out the library at at Hogwarts or the Unseen University (Ook!) And every move is swapping two cards in a 3x3 grid.

But, ah, here is the clever bit: Every book contains one spell. Okay, every card is an action card. Each one lets you do a specific kind of swap like swapping two even numbered cards or swapping Nd two cards that are touching. Every time you use an action, you tap that card and can’t use it again. Use up your action cards without getting the cards in a row, you lose.

I have had fun with SSS. The moment I saw it, I had try it and it only took a few minutes to make a copy. It’s not perfect (solving it may be easy enough that I have to switch to the more difficult variants) but it was worth the minimal effort to make it.

SSS is a very simple game that takes only a minute or two. It doesn’t elevate the idea of a nine card puzzle to the level of being the equivalent of Power Grid. But it definitely makes the choices more interesting.

Dunsany Dreams 13

A Simple Truth

During the day, the abattoir stank of blood during the day and reeked of bleach at night.

But it holds this truth. There must be death for meat to be born.

Do beer and pretzel games need big stacks of cards?

Finishing up the PnP version of Goblin’s Breakfast got me thinking about Beer and Pretzel games, since it’s a beer and pretzel game as well as a take that game and a family game. 

Beer and Pretzels isn’t (aren’t?) my favorite genre of games but I do like having a few around. They definitely have a niche. There is a time and place for a rough-and-tumble casual game with room for trash talk and turning off your brain. (College seems to be a prime time to be that time)

But I found myself thinking about Beer and Pretzel Games I’ve played like Nuclear War or Chez Geek or Guillotine or Lunch Money and they all have lots of cards. 

Which makes sense.  Having lots of cards is a way of having a high random factor and room to have lots of jokes or other silly stuff. I mean, I hate, hate the mechanics of Munchkin with the fire of a super nova but John Kovalic did draw some funny cartoons for it.

I don’t know if this makes any sense of having a big deck of action cards lets a game do some of the thinking for you. And that would normally be terrible but works for Beer and Pretzel Games.

BUT... can pure dice games be Beer and Pretzel games? For instance, is Zombie Dice a Beer and Pretzel game? It doesn’t have cards and it doesn’t have any that that but it is casual and thematic and makes people laugh. Would have I played it at three AM in college after a marathon session of D&D?

The answer is almost assuredly yes so a game that consists of a handful of dice, doesn’t have a stack of cards or a way to hurt other folks can still be a Beer and Pretzel game. I can even see an argument that Liars Dice can be a Beer and Pretzel game so even the silly theme is optional.

At the same time, lots of action cards and a fun theme seems like they help a lot. If I woke up tomorrow and decided that it was my new life goal to make a Beer and Pretzel game, that’s where I’d start.

We have taken steps to have better party games

I don’t see myself playing a lot of holiday games this year but there is one game that I have come to associate with the holidays. Apples to Apples, since it’s the party game you can play with anyone. The party game that I have seen played at more Christmas parties than any other game.

I have two strong opinions about Apples to Apples. First, it’s a very strong game design. Second, I could happily never play it again :P

Back when I was a young one, Trivial Pursuit was the ‘great’ party game and I think it’s a terribly flawed game. Trivia is dangerous because it’s so binary, either you know it or not. (Wits and Wagers figured out how to make that work which is amazing. And pub quiz adds booze, which changes everything. You can decide if it’s for better or worse) And it had a meh implementation of Roll and Move.

So, when you consider that I came from a place of charades and Trivial Pursuit, Apples to Apples was a revelation. It was accessible to the point where you could play it with just about anyone and people didn’t get punished for not knowing the capital of Zanzibar or how to mime Christopher Walken.

I know Apples to Apples wasn’t the first ‘designer’ party game (Barbarossa came out before it did, for example) but Apples to Apples was my first experience with it and the first experience for many folks I know. I really think it changed the party game genre.

BUT I think that the ideas that it introduced have been done better since it came out. I would much, much rather play Dixit than Apples to Apples for example. And, yes, I know that tells you how old I am :D I really do think that Apples to Apples paved the way for better, more innovative party games, games that surpassed it.

I’m not big into party games but I do sometimes play them and I’m glad they have gotten better.