REVIEW: Mythbusters: Hit The Target

 Designer: n/a
Publisher: Zimzala Games
Players: 2-4
Ages: 10+
Time: 10-20 minutes
Price: $25


Mythbusters is mandatory viewing at Casa McD, so when I saw Zimzala showing a Mythbusters board game, I knew I'd have to give it a try. Hopes were not high: media tie-in games are notoriously craptacular, and media tie-in trivia games usually occupy some spot below craptacular which we'll just call Bratz Twister. 


So it's a pleasant surprise that Mythbusters: Hit the Target works just fine as a light, fun family game. There's a bit of trivia, a dexterity element, and a touch of science, and it all comes together just fine.


Goal
The object is to answer trivia questions and hit a series of targets with a miniature rubber crash test dummy ("Buster" from the show) flung from a tiny catapult.


Components
There's no game board, but the targets and answer dials are made of thick, sturdy cardboard. The answer dials are circular pieces with a plastic arrow that can be pointed to one of five different answers: Confirmed, Busted, A, B, or C. Targets are round pieces with a target on one side and a picture of Buster on the other. 


The Buster-pult is made of fairly sturdy plastic with a rubber band to provide tension. It's placed on a cardboard base which allows the catapult to be shifted left or right in order to alter the angle.


I can imagine the rubber bands losing their flexibility and breaking, so it's good that some spares are included. Unfortunately, it's not a standard rubber band size, so after the replacements are gone you may be out of luck. Buster himself is made of soft, flexible rubber. The game also includes a box of cards with questions and answers.


Gameplay
Two to four players or teams take turns pulling a trivia card. Questions are a mixture of show-specific and general science questions with two different formats. There are multiple choice questions with three possible answers (A, B, or C) and direct statements with a "Confirmed" (true) or "Busted" (false) answer. 


For instance, "You can use sharkskin as sandpaper" would require a reply of "Confirmed" or "Busted". (Yes, sharkskin can be used as sandpaper.) One example of a multiple choice question is "If you get sprayed by a skunk, you can get rid of the smell by using: A. Beer. B. A mixture of soap, hydrogen peroxide, and baking soda. or C. Tomato Juice. (The answer is B.) There are some simple, general science questions, but most require some familiarity with the show.


Each player or team secretly chooses an answer using their dial, then places the dial face down. When everyone has chosen, they reveal their dials.


If you got the answer wrong, nothing happens. If you got it right, you roll a die and perform the action indicated by the roll. These actions break down into three categories: target placement, catapult adjustment, and launching. 


If your die shows the target icon, you can place one of your targets anywhere on the playing surface, or move a target which you have already placed. Targets are placed with the picture of Buster facing down. 


If your die has an "aim" result, you may change the aim of the catapult by 10, 20, or 30 degrees. The catapult begins in a central position, but as the targets begin to fill the table and spread out, players may want to shift the angle in order to reach a specific target.


The final option is LAUNCH. If you decide to launch, you place the little rubber Buster on the catapult, draw it back, and let him fly. Any target he hits gets turned over and counts as a point for that target's team. For example, if you're trying to reach your blue target and hit a green target instead, then tough luck: the green team flips the target and scores the point. Three points wins the game. 


Conclusion
I'm not a fan of dexterity games, but Mythbusters: Hit the Target provides a good mix of knowledge and dexterity. Finding the right amount of force is a matter of trial and error, so players should each have an opportunity to try a few trial flings before the game begins. (Maybe agree upon a fixed number of test-flights, perhaps 5, so everyone can warm up.) 


There's a mild tactical element involved in placing your targets. Do you spread them out or run them in a fixed line? Group them together or place them near the targets of someone who's a lousy shot? Since Buster can fly pretty far, the game demands either a long table or even some floor space in order to play.


Some questions may seem absurdly easy for adults. One example is "Which scientist came up the basic laws of motion: A. Pasteur, B. Newton, C. Galileo." Obviously, any adult will know that it's Newton, but this is a family game meant for both young and old. The mixture of easy and hard answers, and the inclusion of simple binary choices like "confirmed" or "busted," increases the odds that younger gamers will get a chance at the Buster-pult, which is really what they want to do anyway. 


Along the way, a bit of knowledge is conveyed, so there's certainly an educational element to the game. The blend of trivia and dexterity is just right for mixed groups of young and old. This is an easy recommendation for fans of the show.

UPDATE: The publishers let me know that they will send replacement rubber bands upon request.

Small World Underground

Designer Phillipe Keyaerts and Days of Wonder are taking Small World subterranean. Small World Underground features new races, new powers, and a whole new underground map. Keyaerts has this to say about the new Small World:

Thoughts of changing the landscape of Small World have been in my head for quite some time. A land filled with Mountains seems to require running water, and so now we have Underground rivers. There is a double impact of the river: being difficult to cross, it can protect your regions... but you can also navigate the river to cross the board quickly. Mountains also begat Volcano regions that can't be conquered, which of course leads us to a race (Flames) that can exploit them!

Another important idea I had in mind were legendary artifacts which can be transferred from generation to generation. While previously powers were specific to a race, now we have new strong powers but that can be claimed by different races. Some of those artifacts didn't need to move on the board so they became magical places which opened up my mind to even more ideas on how they could be used.

Even when a game is finished and published, it's not easy to stop working on the design. I'm really happy to have the opportunity to look back at some ideas and explore the Small World universe even more deeply with Small World Underground.

SWU is now available for preorder. You can check out the official website for photos and rules.

It's Disney's Universe...

...we just live in it.

Lego has its own Universe, and now Disney wants theirs. Disney isn't going the full massively multiplayer route (they already own Club Penguin), but is instead creating a minorly multiplayer game for Wii, PS3, and Xbox 360.

Disney Universe will be the first time characters from all of Disney's different realms (classic and contemporary animation, television, Pixar, and live action) will appear in a single property (other than a theme park). Gamers will be able to "suit up" as 40 different characters from movies like Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo, Tron, Lilo and Stich, and others. There has been remarkably little information on the project, which is odd given its Fall release date. Thus far, there's no complete list of characters, only two screen shots, and the teaser (below) to show what it might be like.

We do know that players get specific tools and abilities based on the character costume they're wearing. They'll be able to explore 6 different world to solve puzzles and defeat enemies, in either co-operative or competitive play. The Disney Blog is reporting that Alice in Wonderland and Monstropolis will be two of the game worlds.

Disney Interactive just published Traveler's Tales Lego Pirates of the Caribbean, which is the same classic gameplay (and some of the same classic annoyances) as other Lego games. Disney/Lego also struck a deal for Toy Story and Pirates of the Caribbean Lego sets. Could we see a Lego Toy Story game in the near future?

Warren Spector Does DuckTales

WARNING: Comic book geekery ahead.

While game designer Warren Spector (Deus Ex, System Shock) was still working on Epic Mickey, he was already expressing a desire to do a DuckTales game: "A day does not go by where I don't tell somebody at Disney: 'Uncle Scrooge, come on! Donald! Huey, Dewey, and Louie! Come on, let me do a duck game!' So yeah, I would love to do a duck game."

Spector didn't get his Uncle Scrooge game, but he got the next best thing: the chance to write BOOM! Comics' new DuckTales comic book. The series relaunched this week with the first issue of Spector's new storyline, and the results are ... unfortunate.

Let's back up a little. Uncle Scrooge McDuck is one of the great comic book characters of all time. His greatest adventures--best chronicled by Don Rosa and Carl Barks--are epic quests for treasure. First Barks, and later Rosa, evolved an elaborate mythology and cast of characters, with Rosa in particular taking pains to turn the Barks "Duck" mythos (it's like the Cthulhu mythos, only more feathery and less tentacally) into a coherent storyline. Rosa's Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck is one of the finest achievements in comic history.

Scrooge isn't a villain. He's hardworking, brave, austere, adventurous, clever, and, yes, very stingy: a perfect Scottish stereotype. His money and treasure were earned through sweat, courage, and negotiation. This is the core of the entire 60 year history of the character.

And that's what makes Spector's first issue of DuckTales such a misbegotten mess. He gets off to a promising start with some fan service as Scrooge tours through a museum filled with treasure from past adventures. And then Webbigail (the annoying mini-Daisy Duck from the DuckTales TV series) takes center stage and turns herself into the Voice of Moral Authority. And she does it while running a game of D&D (Ducks and Danger) for Huey, Dewey, and Louie, no less! She begins by complaining that D&D is just about "taking things that don't belong to you," and then proceeds to lecture everyone about how wicked Scrooge is for collecting (not stealing, mind you: earning) all his treasure and how he needs to give it all back.

I so wish I was making that up, but the whole premise of Spector's storyline is a rebuke of the entire series. I was going to title this post "Warren Spector Wrecks DuckTales," but I'm still hoping this is all a setup for some clever turnaround. Perhaps by issue 2 Webbigail will wind up as a tiny serving of Peking Duck in a Chinese restaurant and the whole notion of returning treasure will turn out to be a bad idea. The issue ends on a promising note as Huey, Dewey, and Louie--hectored and sidelined for most of the issue--make a surprise appearance, so perhaps they finally found that page in the Junior Woodchuck Guidebook that says "Ignore self-righteous little girl ducks."

The comic reviewer at PopMatters is applauding the new storyline for reversing "a pernicious and recursive problem in Uncle Scrooge, the slide into an oligarchical, messianic view of Western paternalistic attitudes to native cultures." That's the kind of anti-Western, jargon-laden, leftist nonsense you can only write after earning a "doctorate in literary and cultural theory." McDuck was a pennyless immigrant who earned his money by his wits and hard labor. He's an example of The American Dream, and some of us still believe in that.

I get the appeal of reversing the standard treasure-quest storyline, but the premise is the worst kind of politically correct revisionism. Spector has a fine storytelling sensibility, and he certainly has a lot of good geek-love for all things Disney and Duck. That's why I'm hoping the rest of the series turns out a lot better than issue number 1.

Report From Joplin

Photo: Josh Edwards

Josh Edwards (of Board Game Reviews by Josh) posts a lengthy report about losing his house in the tornadoes that hit Joplin, Mo. Here's how he begins:

Hi. My name is Josh. For a while, I have been using this blog to exclusively write reviews of board games. I've debated back and forth in my mind for a while whether I wanted to include "site news" posts or not, but thus far have refrained. However, something has happened that has caused me to go ahead and start that section. Bluntly, my house was blown down in a tornado.

Read the whole thing.

Spiel des Jahres: Nominees for 2011

"Spiel des Jahres" is German for "Game of the Year," and it's the most prestigious award in board gaming. A select group of German game critics puts forth various nominees in several different categories, and the winners (and even the nominees) can always expect a considerable spike in sales.

The Game of Year nominees are:

• Qwirkle (an old MindWare title that was just released in Germany this year: it's on sale for 57% off at Amazon)
• Forbidden Island (Matt Leacock's family friendly version of Pandemic)
• Asara (Rio Grande Games)

A new category called "Kennerspiel des Jahres" was introduced this year for more complex games. Those nominees are:

• 7 Wonders (Asmodee)
• Strasbourg (Pegasus Spiele)
• Lancaster (Queen Games)

A third category, "Kinderspiel des Jahres," nominates children's games. This year, the nominees are

• Das ist der Wyrm drin (Zoch)
• Magician's Kitchen (Playroom)
• Monster-Falle (Kosmos)

I believe only four of these games are easily available in the US right now. Those are:

Who Are The Associated Gamers?

Some of you may have noticed the little "Associated Gamers" brand in the corner. AG is the brainchild of the Kevin Schlabach, of Seize Your Turn and Play in Public fame. It's essentially a broadcast channel where a  group of Eurogame bloggers can share their links in one handy place. Although I'm not strictly a Eurogame blogger, Kevin was kind enough to ask me to participate, and I think it's a great place to get links to all your news and reviews in one place.

This is probably a good moment to reiterate what State of Play is and isn't. This is a personal blog focused on games of all types in order to bring interesting items (news, games, puzzles, reviews) to a mainstream readership. There are a number of people covering Eurogames far better than I. Writers and podcasters like W. Eric Martin, Tom Vasel, Dice Hate Me, Board Games Reviews by Josh, the members of Associated Gamers, and many others do a terrific job. And, of course, there are always the BoardGameGeek forums for the brave or foolhardy. I do cover Eurogames, but I don't single them out as the only "good" kind of game. I'm just as likely to write about chess or playing cards or videogames. (In fact, my playing card posts--particularly playing card art--get far, far more hits than anything else here.)

Associated Gamers is also helping to create a sense of community among various game bloggers, which brings me to the most important part of this post. Through the AG messages on Posterous, I've been able to exchange comments with a number of different writers, including Josh Edwards of Board Game Reviews by Josh. Josh lives in Joplin, Missouri. He writes on Twitter: "I and my family are all safe. Unfortunately, my house (and boardgames) were completely lost. So... Yeah... Don't really know what to say."

Someone on BGG has already started a thread to help Josh and his family as they try to rebuild their lives. As I learn more, I'll report it in a future post. Our prayers are with them all.

Free RPG Day

In the tradition of Free Comic Book Day, game stores and publishers are coming together to make June 18th "Free RPG Day." Participating retailers will have free quickstart adventures, dice, and similar items from White Wolf, Wizards of the Coast, Paizo, and other companies. Check out the official site to find a store near you.

Uncle Chestnut's Table Gype on Kickstarter

Paul Nowak of Eternal Revolution has begun a Kickstarter Campaign to continue the production of Uncle Chestnut's Table Gype, which just won a MENSA select award and was also on our Games 100 list for 2011. Paul just sent me a copy of this wonderful game, and I hope to have a review of it here in the near future. In the meantime, enjoy these video that explain a bit about the game, G.K. Chesterton, and Distributism.

Chesterton On Chess and Madness

The previous post about Bobby Fischer calls to mind a famous passage from Orthodoxy, by G.K. Chesterton. Long before Bobby Fischer, G.K. Chesterton wrote of the madness of chess players, the sanity of the imagination, and the challenges of reason. (I've paragraphed the passage to make it easier to read on the blog.)

Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am not, as will be seen, in any sense attacking logic: I only say that this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination. Artistic paternity is as wholesome as physical paternity. Moreover, it is worthy of remark that when a poet really was morbid it was commonly because he had some weak spot of rationality on his brain. 

Poe, for instance, really was morbid; not because he was poetical, but because he was specially analytical. Even chess was too poetical for him; he disliked chess because it was full of knights and castles, like a poem. He avowedly preferred the black discs of draughts, because they were more like the mere black dots on a diagram.[...] 

The general fact is simple. Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so make it finite. The result is mental exhaustion, like the physical exhaustion of Mr. Holbein*. To accept everything is an exercise, to understand everything a strain. The poet only desires exaltation and expansion, a world to stretch himself in. The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.

*Note: This is a reference to Montague Holbein, who tried to swim the English Channel.

Bobby Fischer Against the World

Susan Polgar posted a link to a trailer for Bobby Fischer Against the World, the first feature documentary about Bobby Fischer. (Polgar is featured at the 22-second mark.)



It's an interesting minute that explains the sheer mathematical complexity of chess, which may or may not be what drove Fischer batty. You can find out more at bobbyfischermovie.co.uk.

Ticket to Ride and Bohnanza Are Now Apps

The headline pretty well says it all.  Ticket to Ride is iPad only. Here's a 5 minute video walk through from Days of Wonder.


Bohnanza, a port of the classic bean-planting card game, is available in regular and HD flavors. I've spent some time with the Bohnanza app and it plays fairly well, albeit a bit slowly.

Both of these are classic Eurogames, now available in handy portal formats for a fraction of their original price. With Tikal released last month and Puerto Rico on the way, the Spring is shaping up to be a very good season for mobile Eurogames.

Review: Stacking (XBLA/PS3)

A game set at the turn of the century dealing with child abduction, labor strife, and poverty, all done in a whimsical silent-movie style and featuring a cast of matryoshka (nesting) dolls with diverse powers? Yeah, Tim Shafer and Double Fine Productions are back.

Stacking is a small, Xbox/PSN Arcade game developed simultaneously with Double Fine’s more high-profile Brutal Legend, and is altogether more entertaining and imaginative than its big-budget cousin.

Stacking concerns the adventures of Charlie Blackmore, the smallest member of a family of nesting dolls. When his siblings are kidnapped and forced into indentured servitude, Charlie is left behind due to his small size. This, however, becomes one of his greatest assets, because Charlie is able to “nest” in any doll that is one size larger than him.

Each kind of doll has a unique power. Some of these are useless, such as playing tag or going to the bathroom. But some are essential for solving puzzles, and therein lay the key to the gameplay. If you need to lure a doorman away from his door, you can use the female doll that screams (he’ll rush to her aid) or the female doll that “seduces” (he’ll fall in love and abandon his post for a few seconds). Many locations include multiple solutions, so you might find yourself clearing a room by (ahem) passing gas into a ventilator, or by infiltrating the room as a mechanic, or by sneaking past the guard.

The variety of dolls and powers along with the detailed environments mean the game is rich in content. You can simply go about collecting new dolls and trying out their powers. You can search out sets of matching dolls in order to learn their stories. Or you can just follow the adventure where it leads by talking to characters and using various doll abilities to solve puzzles.

This is an immensely clever and appealing game. There is a bit of potty humor (belching, flatulence, bathroom visits, etc), but nothing too offensive. The odd and disappointing part is the length. For a game that is jammed with detail and loaded with potential, the adventure itself plays out rather quickly. A sequel—The Lost Hobo King—is already out, but it’s even shorter. I guess there are worse things to say about a game than “I wish it went on longer.”

Site Update

Sorry for the light blogging lately, but a combination of work, vacation, volunteer obligations, the beginning of grad school, minimal gaming time, and the complete meltdown of Blogger conspired to keep me away from the game table and the blog.

Also: I'm lazy.

While I find some balance among work, school, home, and sanity, blogging may be light, but there will still be new content each week. I have a lot of items I've been wanting to review, and I hope to start getting some of those posted next week.

And just so reading this post wasn't a total waste, here's a sculpture made of Scrabble tiles.

The sculpture and the photo are by David Mach (the link is NSFW).

The Rivals For Catan: The Card Editor

I haven't had a chance to play The Rivals for Catan, but I just noticed that Mayfair has a custom card creator for the game. Here's how they describe it:

Here you have the possibility to create your very own playing card within minutes. The “Harald” card serves as a template. Just insert a picture, choose a name, and create a short text for your very own hero card. After that, all you have to do is save your work as a JPG or PDF file, print it, and glue it to the original “Harald” card.

Repostings

Blogger kept saying they were going to restore the posts they wiped out, but that never happened. Instead, I've reconstructed them from the RSS feed. It's not that the content was so deathless and essential that I felt it needed to be preserved forever, but it's irritating to do something and have it deleted.

Games Magazine: Online Contest (Xiangqi/Chinese Chess)

Wayne Schmittberger, my boss at Games Magazine, designed a new online contest based on Chinese Chess (Xiangqi). I haven't tried it yet, but it looks fairly brutal.

The goal is to use the opening setup shown above, and then "determine the number of different positions that can occur after the first player’s (Red’s) second move in a game of xiangqi, if both of Red’s moves are made with cannons. That is, after Red moves a cannon, Black replies with any legal move by any piece, and Red moves a cannon again (either the same cannon as before or the other one), how many different positions can appear on the board?"

Check out the site for the full instructions and details on how to enter the contest. The prizes are a year's subscription to Games Magazine. Deadline is July 1st.

NOTE: This is a republication of a post lost by the Blogger software. Originally posted 5/12/2011.

Home Sheep Home: A Shaun the Sheep Game

Home Sheep Home is a remarkably popular free Java game featured on the Shaun the Sheep home page. It's a simple but immensely appealing puzzle game with a gentle watercolor/ink art style and clever challenges. The goal is to get Shaun, Shirley, and Timmy back to the barn by solving various obstacle-based puzzles. It's not particularly hard, but it's fun nonetheless.

Now, Home Sheep Home has made the leap to the App Store. It's the same as the flash game, but for $1 you can take it along with you on all your plasticine-animated adventures.

NOTE: This is a republication of a post lost by the Blogger software. Originally posted 5/12/2011.

Tetris Gets a Movie

Directed by Michael Bay, starring Johnny Depp as "Four-Block-L-Shaped-Piece," and with special effects by WETA Workshop!

Okay, so I made that up. But there is a Tetris movie, and it's called Ecstasy of Order: The Tetris Masters. In the tradition of The King of Kong, Darkon, The Dungeon Masters, and Word Wars, this is a documentary about a particular gamer subculture, and no doubt will feature the usual obsessives and Aspergians wrapping their entire lives around something most us only find passingly entertaining.


Ecstasy of Order: The Tetris Masters Full Trailer from Adam Cornelius on Vimeo.


NOTE: This is a republication of a post lost by the Blogger software. Originally posted 5/12/2011.

WIM Sona Pertlova Passes Away

Susan Polgar is reporting that Woman International Master Sona Perlova died last Sunday at the age of 23. She was diagnosed with cancer during the 2008 Chess Olympiad.

Viktor Novotny writes:

Sona decided to fight the disease, under the influence of strong medication she played the Dresden Olympiad and undertook the chemotherapy right after it. After a year of intensive medical care she seemed to be fit again and she made the best individual result of the Czech players on the European Team Championship achieving a WGM norm. But the cancer came back. In the September of 2010 she became paralyzed during the tournament in Rijeka and the prediction of the doctors didn’t give much hope.

Our prayers are with Sona and her family.

NOTE: This is a republication of a post lost by the Blogger software. Originally posted 5/12/2011.

Blogger Problems

Blogger had some sort of meltdown and wiped my last couple days worth of posts. They're making noise about restoring them, but so far, nothing. I'm not going to post much until they straighten this out. If my posts don't return by tomorrow, I'll try to reconstruct the lost items.

Scrabble Gets Dumber, Sort Of

Last year around this time, Mattel announced that Scrabble would now "allow" proper nouns in play. (Mattel owns the rights to Scrabble outside of the US, while Hasbro owns the US rights.) This was the outrageous outrage du-jour among the gaming community in general and Scrabble cognoscenti in particular.

Except that Mattel didn't do anything of the sort. They were merely creating a branded spin-off called Scrabble Trickster, and misleading the press just a bit in order to gin up controversy and thus get some free publicity.

It worked like a charm (searches for the phase "Scrabble proper nouns" yield thousands of links), so they decided to do it again.

The latest news is that stupid non-words like "grrl","innit", and "thang" are being added as "official" Scrabble words. Wellllll ... yes and no.

The Collins Official Scrabble Word Book, in a desperate attempt to get themselves permanently dropped as a resource for tournament play, is indeed publishing a new edition with 3,000 additional words, some of them quite stupid. "Innit" is a kind slang contraction, which would exclude it from play. "Grrl" is just an abbreviation that's not abbreviated. No word yet on whether "pwned" is included, but I wouldn't be a bit surprised.

The World Scrabble Championships uses the SOWPODS list as its official word source. SOWPODS is a combination of the US/Canadian Official Scrabble Players Dictionary (the OSPD) and the UK Chambers Official Scrabble Words (the OWL). In 2005, Mattel changed their preferred (non-US) dictionary to the Collins Official Scrabble Word Book, but as far as I can tell, SOWPODS remains on the OSPD/OWL standard. If I'm wrong about that, please correct me and I'll update this post.

The US, Canada, and Thailand still use The Official Tournament and Club Word List (TWL), a modfication of the OSPD for tournament play, so these changes affect US play not at all. One the other hand, WESPA, the World English Scrabble Players Association, appears to be getting ready to use the new Collins list for international play.

All this does is create maximum confusion for international play and further discredit the use of Collins as any kind of international standard. The US player associations were correct to maintain conservative standards for acceptable words, thus avoiding the desperate trend-chasing and regionalisms of the international Scrabble community.

None of this matters one jot, however, in standard play. If someone slams down "grrl" during a home game, you're quite free to shake your head in sad disappointment and refer to the OSPD or TWL. This is exactly why my ancestors fought the Revolutionary War: so I didn't have to suffer stupid British word standards during Scrabble play. Up the Colonies!

Sid Meier Wants to Friend You

CNN has a long story about Sid Meier's upcoming Civilization game for Facebook. The social gaming version of Civ, dubbed Civilization World (or CivWorld), has been rumored at least since 2009, and Meier posted a more detailed note about it last January. The game went into closed alpha-testing shortly thereafter, and remains in that state today. Sid had this to say about the game:

I’m having a really fun time hands-on designing and programming Civ World along with our terrific team at Firaxis. In the coming months, we'll be posting a series of gameplay updates here on the fan page detailing parts of the game. Today I’d like to talk a little bit about the organization of the game to tide you over until that time comes. 

Civ World games will have a well-defined beginning and end, each ending with a triumphant civilization and one person recognized as that game’s most prestigious player. Along the way, as you progress through the different eras of time, you'll have the chance to win era victories as well. We want players to have both a final goal to work towards, as well as short-term objectives to achieve as they play. The trophies you unlock with your triumphs will carry over from game to game, and you can show them off in your throne room.

A social game with a beginning and an end? As if. Social games need to go on and on and on forever, preferably while selling people imaginary coins and annoying as many friends as possible. This Sid Meier guy doesn't know a thing about how to design quality games, like FarmVille.

Epic Gaming Con

Epic Gaming Con is a new gaming convention being held this year in Las Vegas (June 16 – 19 at the Paris Hotel and Casino) and Philadelphia (September 29 – October 2 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center). This is a free-to-attend gathering of board and trading card gamers.

The con is being organized by Cryptozoic Entertainment, which is currently working on a board game based  based upon the Lookout comic from Penny Arcade. It looks like the Cryptids have been inspired by the Penny Arcade gang to create an analog equivalent to the PAX gaming show, which is currently the biggest electronic gaming con in the country.

Is there room for another Gen-Con/Origins-style show on the roster? As long as they reach parts of the country that rarely get board/card-gaming cons, I'd say yes. I never get to either Gen Con or Origins because they're too far away. Since is Philly is just down the road from me, I may actually get to go.

Chesterton On Games

I'm an avid Chestertonian, so I loved this shirt from Eternal Revolution, the makers of Uncle Chestnut's Table Gype. Make sure you look around their shop while you're there, and learn a bit about Distributism while you're at it.

UPDATE: Brett J. Gilbert shot me a Twitter message with a link to the entire essay from which this quote is taken. People, if you love language, if you love a man with a cheerful hunger for life, if you simply love good humor, then you need to read more G.K. Chesterton. He is the great author that your teachers kept you from all those years because of his dangerous ideas. You become a better person for having read him.

The Angry Birds Theme by Pomplamoose

And if you need to know more about Pomplamoose, go here.

Eyeball Benders--Vacation Edition ANSWERS

Wow. I knew I made these hard, but I thought some Orlando visitors would have recognized some of them. No luck: no one figured out any of the answers, so here's each original Eyeball Bender with the larger picture from which it comes.

1. Hogwarts Castle: Wizarding World of Harry Potter (Universal)

2. St. George & the Dragon: Germany Pavilion, Epcot

3. The Lorax: Universal Islands of Adventure

4. Daisey Duck: Disney World

5. Beetle Bailey: Universal Islands of Adventure

6. Butterbeer Cart: Wizarding World of Harry Potter (Universal)

7. Magic Brooms: Disney Hollywood Studios

A Closer Look: French Tarot: Trumps 13 & 14

Many people are familiar with the standard Tarot suits (the "Major Arcana") used for "divination" purposes, but they're less aware that Tarot cards were created for playing trick-taking games and have a rich and diverse design history. These images are part of an ongoing series highlighting the art of a single deck used in France, which contains scenes of rural and domestic life in the 19th century.

Click to enlarge.

Tarot Trump No. 13 Detail

Click to enlarge

Tarot Trump No. 14 Detail

Z-Man Updates

The new Z-Man newsletter is online in PDF, and it has details on 3 upcoming games: the tile-laying game Mondo, an area-control game called Palenque, and the Discworld-inspired Guards! Guards! I've been really enjoying the Z-Man stuff I've seen lately, and I'm particularly eager to get my hands on Troyes. Check out the newsletter for more details.

Updates on The Road to Canterbury

Game designer Alf Seegert sent me a couple of links about the progress of his upcoming game, The Road to Canterbury (Gryphon Games), which I previewed last month.

First up is a long and interesting designer diary written by Alf in in which he explains the origin and evolution of his concept and the way he turned his love for the writing of Geoffrey Chaucer into a game.

The game also now has a Kickstarter Campaign, which is an intriguing new trend to fund and support projects during their development. If the game reaches the $10,000 threshold for support and pre-sales, then publication is guaranteed. As of this writing, they're already past the $7,000 mark with 42 days to go. A $45 "investment" gets you free copy of the game. (It functions like a pre-order.) Higher donations come with nifty bonuses. Check out the Kickstarter site for more details.

Alf and I have exchanged a few emails as we discussed his concerns that people with religious sensibilities might be offended by the game. (I'm a Catholic catechist and lecturer, and I begin work on my Masters in Theology this summer.) The game focuses on Chaucer's character of the Pardoner, a corrupt churchman who sold indulgences and preyed on people's sins. The game places each player in the role of the Pardoner, attempting to get people to commit sins and then profiting from them. These are deadly sins, however, so push too far, and a player could simply die.

Chaucer is one of my great passions, as is medieval Catholicism. The game is true to its period and sources, and if it seems to play lightly with the serious matter of sin and clerical corruption, it also shows the deadly effects of both. In a society that tends to dismiss the very notion of sin, that's a valuable thing. Chaucer himself remained a pious Catholic until his death, and at the end of his life made an "apology" disavowing and repenting for his more bawdy works. (Though this, too, may have been his idea of a joke. Sometimes it's hard to tell with Chaucer.) His satirical work was meant to be medicinal, much like In Praise of Folly by Erasmus. (Erasmus was shocked to learn that his biting satire on Church corruption was thoroughly enjoyed by its main target, Pope Leo X: the man who turned the selling of pardons into an art form.)

I'm looking forward to Road to Canterbury. I think it looks fun and I like the subject matter, but I also think it may be a useful teaching tool.

The Oregon Trail: A Live-Action Educational Game

Introduction
This post is an explanation of an outdoor game I created for a Cub Scout event. It could just as easily be adapted for any age or educational situation, or even just for fun. I'll explain the game in some detail, and then attach some PDFs with all the game cards and signs.

Background
Every year, my wife organizes and leads the annual Cub-o-ree for the Burlington County Council of the Boy Scouts of America. It takes place in the New Jersey Pine Barrens, and is a full day of activities followed by a campfire and an overnight. This is often a Cub Scout's first time camping, and many young Scouts get their first real taste of scouting from the experience.

It's also a ton of work to pull off. Each year, it's planned on a single theme, and run over two weekends so many scouts have an opportunity to attend. This weekend we had about 150 scouts, plus their parents. All of them had to be organized, fed, and directed throughout ten activity periods, plus campfires, skits, and all the other accouterments of scouting. It's a great time, and as I watch my wife pull it off year after year, I'm simply amazed. I couldn't do it for love or money.

I usually get recruited to run one of the "stations" (a 30 minute activity), and sometimes to create them. The stations are based around a single theme. Last year, it was "CSI" (Cub Scout Investigators), and my vegetable DNA extraction was a big hit.

The theme this year was "Pine Tree Pioneers," on a pioneering theme. In addition to making a PVC wagon-building activity, I created a live-action game based on The Oregon Trail. The activities are supposed to mix a bit of education with fun, hands-on interactions, and some physical exercise in order to keep the cubs moving and make them tired. (That last part doesn't work. They never get tired. Ever. By afternoon, their energy level remains positively horrifying.)

Hiking the Oregon Trail
Our scout camp has a trail leading from an outdoor chapel area, down to a lake. The whole trip is about half a mile, and it makes for a nice, shady, semi-scenic hike with a good finish.

I decided to make this trail a full-size game board by creating 6 stops spaced at one-minute intervals. The first stop (in our case, a gathering space with benches) has a sign identifying it as "Independence, Missouri" and "The Oregon Trail." I begin with some facts about pioneer life in general and the Oregon Trail in particular, and then explain that we are going to split into wagon trains and pretend to travel the distance from Independence to Oregon City (the final stop).

In between the start and finish are 4 stops, each marked by a sign identifying it as a real location on the trail: Topeka, Kanasas (the Papan Ferry area); Ft. Laramie, Wyoming; Soda Springs, Idaho; and Ft. Boisie, Idaho. In order to give them an idea of the distances traveled, each sign told the cubs how "far" they have walked the Oregon Trail since their last stop (say, 400 miles), how long it took (about 2 months), and how long it would take today (maybe 7 hours).

The Game
Before setting out, each player gets a bag filled with plastic food to represent their food supply on the westward journey. The goal is for a wagon train to get to the final stop with at least 1 piece of food remaining. The idea is to emphasize the crucial role of provisioning for the journey, and how certain events could affect their trip positively or negatively.

Finding the right amount of starting food was difficult. I began with 5 piece of plastic food per person, but it was too easy. I wound up slashing it back to 2 pieces per person for large wagon trains, and 3 for smaller wagon trains. I wanted them to feel a sense of danger, but not fail altogether. I also wanted them to rely on trading and sharing with other members of their wagon train in order to emphasize the way people depended upon each other.

In addition to their food supply, each player could also choose 1 other thing to bring along, represented by little wooden shapes. I explained these as functioning like "power-ups" in video games, and the kids understood that immediately. The 3 things were a guide, a spare wagon wheel, or a gun. A guide could help you if you were sick or a lost, a wheel could help with wagon and trail problems, and a gun could help with food. Smart groups quickly realized that they shouldn't all take the same power-up, and had to discuss which items to choose that would work best for the group.

At each of the four stops, each player had to choose a card from a bag. The cards represented random events, such as getting lost, food spoilage, attacks, sickness, trading posts, hunting trips, foraging, and so on. (See the document below for all the cards.) Each card directed them to pay some food or a power-up, or to collect some food. Thus, food became a measure of their relative success at the game. Depending on the cards pulled, some lost food, others gained.

Some of the actions were based on the classic computer game Oregon Trail, so there were things like "You got dysentery, pay 2 food or 1 guide!" or "A member of your party was kidnapped by an eagle!"

As they got further along, some people ran out of food, and needed to talk to other members of their party in order to trade for, or simply request, food in order to continue. I ran the activity for 8 hours with 10 groups and a total of 150 kids, and only twice did every member of a party simply refuse to help someone in need. I let it go, but explained at the end how much people relied upon one another, and how part of the Boy Scout Code is "to help other people at all times." I didn't make a big point of it, but I think I made it clear that the "losers" (if there were any) weren't the people who ran out of food, but those who failed to help them.

The game is easy to scale. The tricky part is starting off with the right amount of food. You don't want them to have too much at the end, but you also don't want them to die on the way. (Parents inevitably made Donner Party jokes when people ran out of food, which went right over the heads of the Cub scouts.)

The activity ran well, except for one group which had too many people (We had split this group up into smaller groups, but they ignored us. Did I tell you that the parents, not the kids, can be the hardest part of Cub scouting events?) The activity worked well with 12 people (3 wagon trains of 4 people each), fine with 15 (5 people in each train), and completely broke down with more than that.

I could probably find a way to scale it for more people in a group if I had more food and more helpers. In this case, however, I only had 100 pieces of food and my son to help. If you have 150 pieces and 3 or 4 helpers, you can scale this for larger individual groups. Naturally, this also varies depending upon age. First and second graders took a little while to get the concepts, while older kids grasped it right away.

Remember when distributing the cards among the 4 stations to create an even split among positive and negative events. You can add as many stations as you like.

Here are 3 PDFs with everything I created for the game. Feel free to use it or modify it as you see fit. I imagine it could work quite well in a grammar school environment, for girl scouts, or even for large picnics or family gatherings. It's best outside on a trail, but in large building it could probably be done in hallways.

The Oregon Trail Files
Signs
Rules
Action Cards