An Introduction to Strategy Boardgames Sunday, 11:00 AM; Parlor 3041
All you Ever Wanted to Know About Cooperative Games Sunday, 1:00 PM; Parlor 3041

I will have Vintage Gamer buttons, and will be happy to talk to anyone about games of any age, and the forthcoming return of The Vintage Gamer.

As a side note — if you are attending Balticon — the Gaming track looks stronger than usual this year, so I’d recommend checking it out, not just for me.

So what does this have to do with games? Well, some of us think just growing facial hair for a month isn’t enough effort, so we try to blog every day for the month as well. And my theme this year was vintage games, where I would post a picture representing a vintage game each day, and reveal it the next.

November is over, so it’s too late to contribute financially, but if you want to check out my posts for entertainment’s sake, you can do that here. Hope you find it enjoyable.

Saturday, 9:00 PM (New Media Track) Chesapeake, Everything Old Is New Again: Now grandma and baby can both love Battlestar, If Hot Topic weren’t proof enough, all the stuff that’s old is new. Power Rangers, Doctor Who and many anime and science fiction shows aimed at younger audiences still keep their followings as they grow up. We explore favorite franchises and how much better they’ve aged than their fanbase.

Sunday, 12:00 Noon (New Media Track) Derby Room, Lovecraft Mythos Cagefight: Who Would Win in a Fight? Moderator Norm Sherman Cthulhu vs. Dagon? Yog-Sothoth vs. Shub-Niggurath? Would the match be a TKO or won on points?

Sunday 3:00 PM (Gaming Track) Parlor 1041, Creating Aliens and Their Culture, Moderator Kory Kease – One of the most exciting elements of a campaign, game world, science fiction/fantasy series (book TV, etc.) is the adventure of meeting and discovering new cultures that

Sunday 4:00 PM (Readers Track) Belmont Room, The Heinlein Panel – Moderator David J. Williams – How much math do people really need to know in our Age of Computers? Should we really have to solve a quadratic equation to be eligible to vote? How necessary is it to know calculus nowadays? Is there value in learning math beyond the solving of such problems?

Looks like there’s a little something for everyone there and I’m looking forward to every one of them.

In addition, I’ll be trying to attend all of Mur Lafferty’s events, and John Cmar’s events, and Command Line, and Jared Axelrod, and J.R. Blackwell… and… and…

Somewhere in there I need to sleep, too. Whew.

In old RPG news, we have a few items. First, there’s the concluding articles to Ken Denmead’s Top 10 D&D Modules series: #7 Finale. I approve of both choices (but still no Barrier Peaks?).

Second, Allen Varney (no roleplaying slouch himself) has an interview over at the Escapist with Marc Miller, creator of Traveller.

The retro videogaming department is busy this week. For recent homages, we have Greg Costikyan at Play This Thing! with a review of a Japanese rogue-like and Z over at GeekDad with a review of a NES/SNES clone. For the latter, I’m glad Mur has her old SNES — this thing sounds like a cheap knockoff.

In nods to the past, Marc Cerny, creator of Marble Madness and contributor to many a Naughty Dog and Insomniac game (disclosure: I work for Insomniac Games) has been inducted into the AIAS Hall of Fame. And around the same time Marble Madness came out, there was Starflight, one of the most complex games of its time. Erin Hoffman at the Escapist covers the story of its development.

Finally, a rather interesting story about how partnerships can go awry. Apparently, Konami, the creators of Yu-Gi-Oh, discovered that someone was creating bootleg cards, thereby both profiting from their creation and polluting the market with counterfeits. Little did they suspect that someone was their partner, Upper Deck… Cult-Stuff has all the details.

Long time listeners will remember my very early review of M.U.L.E. Well, there’s another version out there, this time at http://www.planetmule.com/. I haven’t tried it out yet, but it looks like there are clients for Windows, Mac and Linux, and eventually Debian. You do register with the site, but I don’t think they have a central matchmaking server, as they mention using the forum for that. The one strike against them is they credit Dan Bunten, not Danielle Bunten, against her wishes, but it’s probably worth taking a look if you’re a M.U.L.E. fan.

In more D&D related content, we have a repeat of a series at GeekDad, where Ken Denmead reviews the Top Ten D&D modules he found while cleaning up his storage shed. I don’t see Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, but otherwise looks to be a good list of classics: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6

In another GeekDad post (I need to get out more), Michael Harrison interviews Ethan Gilsdorf, author of Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks, a memoir/rediscovery of the geek life. Plus, until January 13 (Wednesday), you can enter a contest to win a copy of the book. See the article for more details.

Finally, yesterday Terry Cavanagh’s retro platformer VVVVVV was released. I tried out the demo and it’s definitely worth it. It’s challenging and fun, and has a very nifty mechanic where you can switch the “floor” to either the top or the bottom of the screen. For a fuller review, check out this one by Anthony Burch on Destructoid.

First, James Maliszewski has a nice little article up at The Escapist, entitled “Founding Fathers.” In it, he covers the history of wargames, from von Riesswitz’s Kriegspiel to David Wesley’s Braunstein (the progenitor of Dave Arneson’s Blackmoor campaign).

Related to this is Monte Cook’s most recent article at the aforementioned The Escapist magazine about the original supplements to D&D record the evolution of the rules. This is a follow-up to his previous post on D&D, already covered here.

Second, Greg Costikyan talks about the background for his new board game, Megacorps, and how he inadvertently created a future history through game design.

Greg also has a review of the Civil War tabletop game A House Divided (designed by Frank Chadwick in 1981). I haven’t played this one, but based on Greg’s review I think I’ll give it a shot as I’m a huge Civil War (or the “recent unpleasantness”) buff.

Finally, on the video gaming front, Nathan Barry on Geekdad reports that Tatio has released a remake of Arkanoid for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Many are the hours I spent playing Arkanoid on my Mac SE — as it was pirated, perhaps I should purchase a copy to balance the books. And you should too, because it’s tons of fun.

Hope your holiday season was a good one and you got to play lots of games! And if not, you’ve got a whole year ahead so get to it…

My friends and I were only a few years older than he was, and I’m still not sure how we figured it out. Determination, maybe. Ah well, as he says, a lifetime of gaming ensued…

As a side note, I have to agree with Mr. Cook about the quality of the writing. After looking at my basic D&D rules (the blue book mit dem Dragon), I can’t figure out how I and my seventh-grade compatriots figured out how to play. While conversational in tone, it’s nearly incomprehensible and certainly incomplete, especially compared to today’s RPGs. But then, I doubt the original Basic D&D was meant to be complete. I believe that Gygax intended that Advanced D&D was the One True Path, and Basic D&D was nod to the past (a lot of the material came from the original three books) but ultimately a gateway drug to the New Shiny. But enough of the customers disagreed that we ended up with the odd case of two different flavors of D&D (AD&D and Basic/Expert) for many years.

But enough of that. I’m moving on. I think.

As a side note, they mention both the Magnavox Odyssey — as the first game console — and Simon — as a game that will survive the ages. The importance of these games isn’t a coincidence. They were both designed by The Father of Video Games Ralph H. Baer.

Link

Link

If you like superheros and in particular works that deflate the somewhat overblown tropes of the genre, then I recommend this book. Keepsie Branson is one of a group of people with apparently useless superpowers — hers is the power to prevent anyone from taking things from her. But when she is given a mysterious object by a supervillain, she and her friends become embroiled in a conflict between both “good” and “evil” — and it’s not clear which side is which. The results will change the destiny of Keepsie and her city forever.

But don’t take my (admittedly biased) word for it — go to Amazon and read some of the other reviews there. And buy a copy today, if you can!

For a fuller picture of the show, I recommend you check out The Spiel Origins episode for a lot more show floor interviews, and the Dice Tower Origins episode for more info and a nice interview with (Spiel des Jahres winner!) Reiner Knizia.

Featured interviews:

• Matt Duhan of Gozer Games discusses: Collateral Damage
• Rob Balder of many things discusses: The FUnny Music Project, Erfworld, Partially Clips, Get Nifty
• Peter Hansell of Tablestar Games discusses: Wealth of Nations, Martinis and Men, HeroCard Orc Wars
• Fred Hicks of Indy Press Revolution and Evil Hat Productions discusses: Heaven and Earth, Archaia Studios, Avenues and Alleyways, Solipsist, Spirit of the Season, Spirit of the Century, Don’t Rest Your Head, Don’t Lose Your Mind, Monsters and Other Childish Things, GODLIKE, Wild Talents, Dresden Files RPG
• Curt Covert of Smirk and Dagger Games discusses: Cutthroat Caverns, Run For Your Life, Candyman, Hex*Hex, Hex*Hex Next, Cutthroat Caverns: Deeper & Darker
• Greg Lam of Pair Of Dice Games discusses: Chopstick Dexterity Megachallenge 3000, Warp6, Knockabout, Marvin Marvel’s Marvelous Marble Machine

Pictures of my trip to Origins including most of these folks can be found on my flickr feed. You can also see the lovely new sewer line.

For those of you in the southeast of Australia, there is a major videogame exhibition going on now in Melbourne until Sunday, July 13:

The largest ever exhibition dedicated to the past, present and future of videogames, Game On has toured the world, being presented at major international cities across the globe including Helsinki, Chicago, Tel Aviv, Hong Kong and London.

Unfortunately for those of us in other locations, I couldn’t find any information on future appearances, so you Aussies enjoy it while you can. Perhaps someday it will return to London, its original home.

Link

When the heat goes up, the photographer gets silly…

While honestly I’d probably buy it even if they scrawled it with crayon on old paper sacks (well, maybe not), it’s nice to see the level of detail that’s going into this.

[Link]

Link (CNN Video)

Show Notes:

I’m at Balticon and have to run to a panel… show notes tomorrow.

Ramsons Kala Pratishtana has organized their second exhibition of traditional Indian board games at the Pratima Gallery, Mysuru. The exhibition runs from 16 – 25 May.

They also started a kick-ass blog on traditional Indian board games.

There are some nice entries and pictures in the blog. The most recent one talks about how to play “Goats and Tigers,” which appears to be an alternate version of Fox and Geese.

Link

Show Notes:

• News and Notes
• Check out the website for news (but you already are…)
• Listen to Take Control of Podcasting on the Mac!
• The influence of Bobby Fischer
• Games Magazine, Jan/Feb 1981 Article
• Why chess variants?
• Chaturanga
• Shatranj
• Ethiopian Chess (Senterej)
• Burmese Chess (Sittuyin)
• Cambodian Chess (Ouk Chatrang)/Siamese Chess (Makruk)
• Citadel Chess (Shatranj al-husun)
• Tamerlane Chess (Shatranj al-kabir)
• (Turkish) Great Chess
• Four-Hand Chaturanga (Chaturaji)
• Round Chess (misnamed Byzantine Chess).
• Listen to Pulp Gamer: Out of Character!
• Chinese Chess (Xiangqi)
• Bob calls
• Korean Chess (Janggi)
• Bob makes his move
• Japanese Chess (Shogi)
• Chu Shogi
• Dai Shogi
• Tai Shogi
• Bob brings out the computer
• Listen to Zombie, Inc.!
• Circular Chess (modern version of Round Chess)
• Spherical Chess
• Toroid Chess
• Cylindrical Chess
• Hexagonal Chess (Glinski’s, others)
• 3D Chess (Star Trek, others)
• Bob nearly loses a customer
• Beyond Chess
• Fairy Chess
• Grasshopper Chess
• Nightrider
• Kreigspiel
• Alice or Looking Glass Chess
• Progressive Chess
• Knightmare Chess (designed by Bruno Faidutti)
• Chess Equalizer
• The game ends sadly
• Play Winning Chess series
• How to Reassess Your Chess, by Jeremy Silman
• Chessmaster
• Fritz
• Chess^4
• Bughouse/Crazyhouse
• Game of the 4 Seasons
• Fischer Random
• Grand Chess
• Omega Chess
• No feedback, have to catch up, sorry
• Closing

Additional Links:

• The Chess Variant Pages
• A History of Chess, by HJR Murray
• The Classified Encyclopedia of Chess Variants, by David B. Pritchard
• New Rules for Classic Games, by R. Wayne Schmittberger
• The Oxford History of Board Games, by David Parlett
• The Abstract Gamer covers Chu Shogi
• The Family Game Store (introduced me to Beyond Chess and Chess^4)
• The Spiel (introduced me to The Chess Equalizer)

Final thoughts:

With all of these games, I know I screwed something up somewhere, so feel free to correct me.

[Link]

For those who want to play the original Traveller, QLI/RPGRealms has a single book that reprints the first three “little black books”, plus many other reprints and Classic Traveller-related items. They also have a d20 version of Traveller, but really, why bother…

Link

I’ll be purchasing my own copy tonight and I’ll try not to let it delay the next show any more than it already is.

Now if they’d only bring back The Neverhood — that game was awesome. I still have the soundtrack that I picked up at E3 one year. Digging around, I see there are also plans to make it into a feature film, which would be interesting. Given Doug TenNapel’s connections, perhaps Frederator will be working on Earthworm Jim as well?

Valley Games Inc Reveals Pre-order Partner, and Prepares to Reopen 750 Special

Valley Games Inc. is pleased to officially announce its partner for accepting and delivering its 750 Special preorder games worldwide. The partner is Eagle Games, a company with a track record for creating big box games with an emphasis on strategy and fun.

Eagle Games will offer selected Valley Games titles for preorder and worldwide delivery via its website located at www.eaglegames.net. Customers will be able to access all the discounts and bonuses normally associated with the Valley Games 750 Special preorder program from the Eagle Games website.

Torben Sherwood, Vice-President of General Operations for Valley Games comments, “This is a big step for our preorder program. Now we are able to offer our customers another option for preordering our games, and we could not be more excited about working with such a respected company. Valley Games will maintain its regular distribution partnership with PSI, so the pre-order partnership with Eagle Games does not impact our distribution in the U.S.”

In addition, Valley Games is pleased to announce the reopening of the 750 Special pre-order program starting Monday, April 21st at 12:00pm EDT. Two games will be initially available for pre-order: Titan and Reiner Knizia’s Municipium. More titles will be made available for pre-order throughout the year.

Customers are invited to visit www.valleygames.ca and www.eaglegames.net to pre-order their favourite games, and learn about what’s new with the 750 Special.

Hopefully this will allow Valley Games to avoid the pre-release distribution troubles that plagued them with Hannibal, and let them focus on putting out new versions of great old games, and great new games as well.

As far as the next show, I’m working on it now. With the recent (as in the past few months) passing of Bobby Fischer it seems appropriate to finally cover chess. I’ll be talking about my personal history, ways to get into it for novices, and ways to make it more interesting for those who either are tired of it or didn’t think much of it in the first place. If you have thoughts along those lines, drop me a line. Hopefully I’ll be recording this weekend, though with my daughter’s play and my friend’s seder, it might be tight.

And don’t worry Gygax fans, I’ll be doing D&D at some point, too. Fischer’s just first in line.

• Intro
• Interview
• Closing

Links:

• Tic-Tac-Toe Uncyclopedia entry

Final thoughts:

Real show in 2 weeks. Promise and for true.