Wow, that’s a lot of R&W contests

 I read in the Boardgame Geek newsletter that the sixth Roll and Write Design Contest has started. It won’t be done until the end of January and will be fun to follow it.

https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2532785/6th-roll-write-game-design-contest?mc_cid=d48092cf18&mc_eid=3fda55930d

... Wait a second. The sixth R&W contest? (Wow, I missed the fifth one!) The first one ran from February to June of 2019. Most design contests are annual but there are going to have been six Roll and Write contests in two years? That’s incredible.

Okay. It can be true that a Roll and Write game can be easier to physically make than a lot of other categories of games. (Emphasize on can. Many designs have you make a deck of cards as well as a game sheet) But I can’t believe that it is magically easier to DESIGN Roll and Write games. Maybe they are easier for play testers to make and then play test but that’s the only part of the process that seems faster.

Not that I’m complaining. Over the last few years, I have come to really appreciate Roll and Write games, particularly Print and Play ones. It’s a remarkably flexible format, as well as being very easy to make. The 2017 GenCan’t R&W Design Contest was a major milestone in my gaming life.

Still, I have to wonder why this contest has happened so often. And I have a theory. I have heard that there’s been some success taking the next step and getting games formally published from the R&W contests. And maybe that’s added bit of inspiration needed.

No matter what, it’s nice that these contests keep happening.

Bruce Sterling taught me some history

 All throughout reading Pirate Utopia by Bruce Sterling, who found myself constantly thinking ‘What am I reading!!’ and feeling like I was missing something terribly vital to my understanding of this little book.

Which, to be fair, I was. I had never heard of either The Regency of Carnaro or the Free State of Fiume. My understanding of the events is still very, very sketchy by I _ think_ it boils down to a tug of war between Italy and Yugoslavia over the control of the port city that is now called Rijeka after WW I. From what I have read, for a short time, the area became an autonomous zone and can be viewed as a socia experiment.

Sterling’s book could be described as ‘what if it had worked?’

Beyond that, it is a very hard to summarize Pirate Utopia. The protagonist is Lorenzo Secondari, who I have not been able to figure if they were a real historical figure. He is a skilled enough engineer that he is able to get Fiume a functioning infrastructure and manufacturing base. And this ruthless bit of practicality enough for Sterling to exposit how the crazy political theories of the dreamers and poets in Fiume could actually get pulled off.

I realized after I finished the book that it isn’t a continuous series of events. Instead, Sterling picks out points in the timeline that he has created. Points that highlight changes in Fiume and in Secondari’s life. The book has an abrupt end but it ends at the point where the political movement and Secondari about ready to go beyond Fiume.

I am having a very difficult time figuring just what I think about Pirate Utopia. Is it a what if adventure? A warning of the different slippery slopes that fascism can take? A history lesson disguised as a science fiction yarn? A thank you note from Sterling for his years living in Italy?

Well, I know that I will be thinking about this short book longer than it took me to read it. And it did make me look at some history I never knew even existed.

I go to read more Frederik Pohl

 The Tunnel Under the World by Frederik Pohl is a short story that I discovered when I was I was trying to find a book that had The Wall Around the World in it. I didn’t find a copy of that anthology but I did find out that Project Gutenberg had the text for the The Tunnel Under the World.

I don’t think the story would have had the impact on me that it did if I hadn’t just read the Wall Around the World which blithely glosses over the horrifying implications of the setting. The Tunnel Under the World dives headlong into them.

Spoilers

Spoilers

Spoilers 

Spoilers

Seriously, it’s free on Project Gutenberg 

Spoilers

Guy Burckhardt slowly realizes that something that is off with the world. For one thing, every day is always June 15th. For another thing, he is being constantly bombarded by advertising for products he’s never heard of. 

More spoilers since the twist is a whopper

Spoilers 

Spoilers

It turns out that the entire town was killed in a massive plant explosion. An unscrupulous businessman copied the brains of as many of the corpses as he could his hands on and put them in tiny robots in a tiny town on a tabletop so he has a a test market that he can do anything to. At the end of the story, Burkhardt is back to being trapped in the endless cycle while the businessman has moved on to political propaganda.

Yes, it turns out to be a horror story. 

The whole concept of robbing the dead of their minds for the purpose of market research is successfully shocking because, wow, is that devaluing human existence to a horrifying degree. And, yet, you have to admit, you can imagine someone doing it if they actually could get away with it and turn a profit. And the antagonist wins.

The story was first published in 1955 and, wow, is it cynical. I had flashbacks of both Groundhog’s Day and The Truman Show but this was much more disturbing than those movies. The fact that the antagonist isn’t a theatrical Doctor Doom or Red Skull bad guy but a perfectly believable businessman just makes the story work.

I have read Fredrik Pohl before this but, man, I need to read more. If the Tunnel Under the World is anything to go by, he had an interesting view of human nature.

My October PnP

 Oh, I had plans for October. Our son was going to be going back to school part time with blended learning and I’d have time to get some uninterrupted crafting time in. And then blended learning got pushed back :D Eh, losing print and play time is a small sacrifice to keep everyone as safe as reasonably possible.

Really, what it meant was making a rough copy of Agent Decker so I could try it out got pushed back.

Here’s what I made:

Islands of Microlandia

Everchange Dungeon (2019 9-Card Contest)

Fog Town (2019 9-Card Contest)

Warlock’s Eye

Into Cursed Pit (2018 Solitaire Confest)

Penny Rails

My ‘big’ project for October turned out to be Penny Rails. As I mentioned, I had bigger ambitions but that’s not where I needed to focus my time management. And I have been curious about Penny Rails for ages. A train game that actually feels like a train game in 18 cards and nine coins? And if it has that feel, will there be a single dominant strategy? 

You know, October was a crazy month in a crazy year. I got in some crafting. That is still a real win.

New assessment: Ablaze works great for casual gaming

 I have sometimes wondered if I have some kind of weird obsession with Heinrich Grumpler’s Ablaze, which is actually a thematically linked set of three games that use the same components. If you count games I’ve played only once, I have played a lot of different games over the years. And, on multiple occasions, I’ve revisited Ablaze for binge plays, despite thinking there are more deserving games for that honor. 

But after my latest revisit, I’m wondering if I’m being too harsh to Ablaze, that Ablaze is actually quite a good set of games. I just haven’t been using the appropriate criteria.

Okay, here’s a short overview. The box has rules for three different games: Wild Fire, Volcano and On the Run. All three are tile games that are themed around forest fires. More than that, they all are can be played competitively, cooperatively and solitaire. They are pretty abstract but their themes do shine through.

And all the games were too light and too random to really work as serious abstracts or ‘serious’ games so I always felt like they weren’t actually good. 

And if I want a brain burning abstract or a meaty game that will be the centerpiece of a game night, Ablaze isn’t a good choice. But for casual gaming? The Ablaze collection is quick and easy to teach with the right amount of choices to keep everyone engaged. And for solitaire, which I play a lot more of right now, the games are light enough that I can get them in but still feel like I have gamed.

Over the last few years, I have gained or regained an appreciation of casual games. (I have also regained an appreciation for James Earnst and Cheapass Games, which is clearly related) Outside of organized game nights and conventions, this is what gets played. And there’s a broader audience for it.

And Ablaze is a really good example of a casual game system. It’s one step more thematic than a deck of cards (Don’t get me wrong, I think a deck of playing cards is the most amazing tool you can have in your tool box) while being very accessible and versatile. Heck, the original Feurio version came out in 2003 and the Ablaze version is still pretty easy to find.

I was right in my old thinking that Abalze isn’t going to set the world on fire (thank you, folks, I’m here all week, don’t forget to tip your waiters) but I now really it’s a game that would see a lot of play for a lot of different audiences.

This is how the magic school genre got started?!

I have been meaning to read the short story ‘The Wall Around the World’ by Theodore R. Cogswell for years. As I understand it, it was the first work that actually featured a school that taught magic. While Ursula K. LeGuin was the one who really solidified and developed the idea in A Wizard of Earthsea, this story touched on the idea earlier.

I eventually found it in Isaac Asimov presents The Great SF Stories volume 15. That’s the problem with individual short stories. They can be harder to find than full books. That particular anthology focused on stories published in 1953, by the way. 

The academy, incidentally, really comes across as a middle school that just happens to teach magic. It doesn’t have the flair or individual touch of, say, Hogwarts, as an obvious example. However, it does actually do the intended trick of making it clear that magic is an every day thing in the setting.

Spoilers

Spoilers

Spoilers 

Even more spoilers

The unnamed magical land of the story is surrounded by a ridiculously big wall. Porgie, the 13-year-old protagonist, figures out how to build a glider and fly over the wall. There he learns that there’s a high tech world on the other side that built the wall to create an environment where magic could develop. In fact, his school teacher is an observer to both track magical development and make sure  folks who figure out how to get over the wall end up okay. 

My first reaction to the story was ‘Wow, this is so pre-New Wave’ So many of the social issues that the setting brings up are glossed over, particularly how the high tech civilization that created a giant prison camp as an experiment is depicted as benevolent :D The story is a classic example of science fiction being about how to solve a problem through cleverness. (I blame John Campbell) 

Which isn’t to say ‘The Wall Around the World’ is a bad story. It is a silly romp that was fun to read. I definitely enjoyed reading it. And I don’t mind the ‘it was science fiction all along twist’ which wasn’t exactly new even in 1953. 

Still, I went in looking for a revolutionary story and got a good but standard yarn with a cute detail. Really, Ursula K. LeGuin earned the credit she gets for developing the idea.

 

Why does scary stuff work?

 It’s almost Halloween. Our six-year-old has been obsessing about Halloween since August. So I feel like I should write about ghost and horror stories/movies/authors/board games/RPGs. But man, where to start? I mean, what can I write about Edgar Allen Poe that hasn’t already been written? 

Really, between ghost stories, gorror, zombies, vampires, undisclosed generic horror, werewolves, demon types and all of the fun you can have with Cthulhu, there’s a lot of subcategories in the whole ‘scare you’ genre. 

Clearly, it touches some kind of nerve on the human race. Perhaps fear fascinates us or is so fundamental that we all can relate to it. According to Paul Eckman, fear is one of the six core emotions (the others are joy, anger, disgust, sadness and surprise and, yes, the Pixar movie Inside Out drew heavily on his studies) 

But our love of media that have scary stuff in them is clearly not just related to fear all by itself. Being able to indulge in it safely and in a controlled way lets our minds add joy to the equation which changes everything. I’m not actually worried about a rabid dog attacking me when I read Cujo or zombies when I watch Night of the Living Dead.

(Too much control can remove all the fear, though. I was in a D&D campaign where we mugged a litch. Took a lot of planning and very special circumstances but we did it. And it wasn’t scary at all)

Clearly, while there are lots of specific niches of scary stuff, media that has scary stuff in it is not really a niche. I’d go beyond saying it’s mainstream and go so far as to say that it is universal. And it’s clearly not just for Halloween.