Monthly Update: April

Chief Medical Officer's log, earth date 4/5/2015.9:04.  Nice trip to San Francisco.  Visited the Academy of Sciences.The planetarium presentation on the interconnectedness of all life on earth was cool.  Also an Albino Alligator named Claude.

Played Mario Kart 8, was a lot of fun.  Tough game but seems like lots of room for growth.  Very impressed at resolution on the Wii U controller.  Seriously considering Wii U purchase.  Also played card game called 'Bang' that was pretty fun and available online.  In the meantime, on the gaming front, I've also played Mario Kart 64, Star Fox and Turok.  Looking into Magic Online.

I also saw a really cool play called 33 Variations at a local theater.  The story follows both a Beethoven scholar whose body is progressively shutting down from symptoms of ALS, while trying to complete a final study on Beethoven's composition 33 Variations on a waltz by Anton Diabelli.  Concurrently, another set of actors perform the story of Beethoven, Diabelli and Schindler as Beethoven struggles to compose his variations and Schindler struggles to keep him in his sponsors good graces.  It was a lot of fun, I have a soft spot for Beethoven's cranky, crazed genius, and the principle and supporting actors were fantastic.  Not to mention the play was performed with a live piano player.  There were also bits of music theory that I found really exciting, having enough understanding to be interested.

On the subject of artists and performers now past, I wanted to say something about Leonard Nimoy and something about Terry Pratchett.  I almost feel I've missed my window.  But... well, I suppose that's not really possible.  Anyway, it turned out Leonard Nimoy was even more of a badass then I ever realized.  And I also realized that Spock is very much the mascot of Star Trek.  Or maybe Kirk is the mascot, dancing around to keep us entertained, but Spock was the heart and soul.  He was the best character in the original series, bar none.  He was an example of how Star Trek would try new things.  He was an alien, he was biracial, he adhered to a bizarre and mystic code of logic.  He had psychic powers.  He was insufferable and yet he was deeply compassionate.  He's everything Star Trek was about.

It's hard not to make it all about Spock.  Nimoy clearly dealt with that his whole career.  Since his passing, I've learned that Nimoy was a Yiddish scholar, director, writer and photographer.  I'm thrilled that Jaconian and I were both able to see him speak at a Star Trek convention.  Twice.  During those talks, I learned that Nimoy did a one man stage show as Theo Van Gogh, exchanging letters with his Mad Genius brother Vincent.  You might have heard of him.

Terry Pratchett I knew less well.  I've read only The Color of Magic, the first book in the Discworld series.  I would like to say, however,  that when I read The Color of Magic, I felt a certain sense of coming home, as though I had been there before, and I had been reading Sir Pratchett's work since childhood.  And if I had to use just one word to describe his writing, it would be delightful.  Perhaps now is as good a time as any to return to his work.

Looking forward, I'm not sure what to expect.  I'm settling into my new apartment, as is my cat, Enkidu.  He has been very playful of late, and that's been fun to watch.  I'm struggling with my laptop connection to my TV, something went wrong and now my laptop screen turns off when I hook in the HDMI cable.  This is really frustrating because I was excited at the prospect of playing Steam games on a big screen.  The Nintendo 64 still works, and my girlfriend really likes Mario Kart, so I may seeing more of that in my future.  Until next time,

-D

In His House in R'lyeh, Dead Cthulhu Wonders If You've Read His Memoirs?

I love H.P. Lovecraft's stories.

I haven't read them all and while I don't, in fact, love them all, I love a lot of what he has written.  Despite the fact that he is somewhat racist and anti-semitic in some of his tales, as a whole, he was a writer of some fantastic weird fiction.

That being said, I think it's very safe to say that Lovecraft is a good description of a cult author, in I feel that a lot more people know about Lovecraft than have actually read his works.  Admittingly, I hadn't read anything by him until I was introduced to him back in late 2003 (the same year I started reading Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams).  I also to not claim to be an expert on anything Elder God or Old Ones related, just want to put that out there before I started gushing over various tomes of Lovecraftian lore.

The "industry" also has quite the love affair with H.P. Lovecraft.  Everything from in-game references (Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, Cthulhu Saves the World, Alone in the Dark), movies (In the Mouth of Madness, Prometheus), to board games (Arkham Horror, Munchkin: Cthulhu, Mansions of Madness).  I feel like saying that Lovecraft's lore, specifically the lore dealing with Cthulhu is a multi-million dollar-a-year industry, but that just might be me talking out of my ass.

There's so much good stuff out there that I would love to get my hands on (refrained from saying "tentacles"), all of it requiring money for one, that I have to keep reminding myself that I don't know a whole lot of people (especially people who live near me) that would have as much fun as I would spending an evening playing a game based on stories by Lovecraft.  A few weeks back, one of my friends Cletus posted on facebook about a Cthulhu game on kickstarter called Cthulhu Wars that looked pretty amazing, not including all of the add ons and "reach goals."  After looking over the kickstarter page, I had to force myself to leave the page and "forget" about it for the three days it had remaining in fear that I would plunk down $139 for a game that I probably wouldn't play too often because the people I do play games with haven't read much of any Lovecraft and would probably rather play Cards Against Humanity or Munchkin.  Don't get me wrong, I love CAH and Munchkin, but it wouldn't be as much fun playing a Cthulhu game with people who don't get the references.  Kind of like listening to a "Weird Al" polka and not recognizing any of the songs: it's still fun, but not as much fun as if you knew the songs to begin with.

I'm not sure where to go with the rest of this article, if it really needs to go anywhere else.  Maybe it's finished?  And so it shall be.

Happy Monday all!

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Playing Games on the Pavement

Drinking Quest 3: Nectar of the Gods

Copyright: Canada ~ Her Royal Majesty, The Queen of England

I don't know when it was that I first found out about Drinking Quest.  I think it might have actually been one of those "customized" adds on the right hand side of the screen while I was browsing facebook.  I don't even remember what made me click on the link, but I did and I'm pretty thankful that I did too.

Drinking Quest is the brainchild of Jason Anarchy, both of whom are based in Canada.  So, if you're looking to purchase said quest, you'll be converting your native currency to Canadian dollars, unless you already live in Canada.  Enough of the brass tacks though, Drinking Quest is a card game set in a fictional fantasy world where you have to. . . um, do stuff and drink while doing it.  It's all very non-complicated and it all sounds like fun as I have admittingly not played any of the games.  I have however played both Munchkin and Dungeons & Dragons (as well as Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Drunk Dungeons & Dragons and Editions 2, 3, 3.5 and 4), so I feel somewhat qualified to plug these beautiful Canadians.

Now this is where the above mentioned link comes in, when I clicked the aforementioned advertisement, it took me to Indiegogo, which is kind of like Kickstarter, except that it isn't.  That's the only difference that I've noticed.  Maybe there are more differences, but I haven't found them yet, mainly because I haven't looked.  It turns out that Drinking Quest has had two previous iterations prior to Drinking Quest 3: Nectar of the Gods, which they are trying to crowdfund up to their initial goal of $11,500 Canadian (that's $11,280.04 US).  The video up on their Indiegogo page is below to give you an idea of how these people seem to have done a great job blending Dungeons & Dragons and Canada (the drinking game, not the country, although that too I guess, considering that is the game's origin):

Looking at their Indiegogo page, I really feel the best option, if you have the money, is the $65 ($85 with shipping) option, which earns/gives/buys you hard copies of all three games.  Volume 1 is currently sold out and not available on their website, so the only way to acquire Volume 1, is by helping them reach their goal of $11,500, of which they are 73.8% complete and there are still 24 days left in their campaign.

That's all I will say, which has been a bit.  I'll probably go help fund them sometime within the week but they definitely seem to be on their way towards reaching their goal and that's mainly what this is all about: people doing something they love and having like-minded people helping out.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Another Brick in Hadrian's Wall

The Final Chapter

This will be the final post in the adventure to purchase 6d10 dice from Epic Gaming, a gaming store I located through Yelp because I didn't want to travel 28 miles round trip.  There'll also be an epilogue about ordering pizza, although that's not really game related.  But anyway.

After driving somewhere around 4 miles from Dutch Bros. to Epic Gaming, I sat in my car briefly pondering if I should take in my half finished espresso boosted coffee drink so that I could have something in my hands to keep them busy in the off chance that they didn't have dice or more specifically, individual d10 dice.  Then the etiquette part of my brain said that I shouldn't bring in a drink to a store.

The store itself was pretty empty once I made my way in.  And by "empty," I mean empty in two ways.  The first being that there was a lot of space in the store and not a lot of it was taken up by actual gaming materials.  I later noticed that most/all of the gaming materials were up against the walls while the middle was left open for the activity of gaming itself.  The second "empty" was that there was only myself, one guy behind the counter and four others playing Magic at one of about six large collapsible tables in the middle of the room.

This brings up another thing that will get to me.  For some reason, people playing Magic intimidate me.  Always have.  If there's a group of people sitting at a table (or multiple tables) playing any iteration of Magic, I will avoid that area.  Most of it is because I never got into Magic and have no real idea what is going on.  I "understand" that each player has a deck with a certain number of cards and those cards do things or can undo things.  There's something called "tapping" in regards to cards being in/out of play.  And if you have enough money, you can build yourself a near unstoppable deck.  Is there even such a thing?  I don't know.  I've also heard (as in physically heard in person) shit-talking in regards to people's decks that to me just isn't cool for gaming.

Back to to the store.  I noticed the people playing Magic, and my brain immediately transitioned from "search mode" to "just buy the fucking dice already."  Once at the counter, I stumbled out the question about individual dice because in the display case, all that I could see were prepackaged Chessex dice.  It turned out, like another games store I frequented in Sacramento, the dice were behind the counter in a gumball-type plastic hand-grab container.  I quickly picked out 6d10 of different colors, but still colors that I thought people would actually want to use for Munchkin, made my purchase and then, was able to calm down.  

I then walked over to where it looked like there were some miniatures and as it turned out, some of the expansion decks for Munchkin.  By this point I had already used the $5 I had in cash for the dice (they were  75¢ each) and didn't want to break out my credit card having already made my purchase.  I had also read on Yelp that Epic Gaming also sold video games, which I would have liked to check out, but again, being the odd person that I am, felt that I needed to leave the store having already made my only intended purchase.  Again, I know it's odd behavior/line of reasoning, but that's just how my brain functions.

Then I left the store and drove back home.  That's the whole story.  Yes, I lead a very exciting life.

Epilogue

I don't know how long this has been around, but Pizza Hut allows you to place orders online.  Without having to talk to anyone!  I'm able to pick out what type of pizza(s) I want, toppings, side orders and such.  Then pay with a credit card and have my pizza delivered.  The only talking is upon greeting the delivery person, and that's only to tip the driver and sign the receipt.  I love not having to talk to a person on the phone and explain what I want, turn down hearing about specials or be put on hold for a couple of minutes.  In a similar vain, it's like going into Little Caesar's Pizza, ordering two large pepperoni pizzas and walking out  with them less than two minutes later using only a minimum of the known English language.  Yes, it's all fast food pizza, but it's perfect for what it is, cheap semi-tasty pizza.  Except that Little Caesar's Pizza is actually really good.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Everything Remains As It Never Was

Munchmadnesskin

In my last post, I mentioned that I was able to play Munchkin for the first time.  I was intimidated at first.  Partly because I'd heard of the game, but knew nothing about it and was playing with people who were familiar with the game and its mechanics.  How familiar?  I didn't ask, but they seemed to know a lot more than me, which during a card game, can be quite a lot, especially when there is more than a single rule.

It's like going to play Killer Instinct or Street Fighter IV with someone and you've never played that game before.  All of a sudden, you're up against someone who knows a handful of specific moves or how to properly execute a Combo Breaker.  It was a little frustrating in that, like in any card game, I didn't want to reveal what cards I had in my hand, but at the same time, understand when I could play a card.  Specifically a monster card.  Not a "Wandering Monster" card, just a regular monster card.  A monster card that happened to be a Level 16 Undead King Tut.

Don't get me wrong, the rules were explained and understood as best they could, considering we were all a smidgen tired, having driven 101 miles to just outside of Astoria, then an additional 15 miles (which took about an hour) to get to a Safeway and back for all the camping things we forgot to bring; like firewood for one.  And we had been drinking steadily for just over an hour and I had broken out a bottle of Fireball to share/introduce.  So really, the non-comprehension was mostly all on me, so I'll take the blame on that one.

In the end though, I really like the game that Steve Jackson has created.  So much so that only after 1 1/2 times playing Munchkin, I have bought the basic deck and three expansion decks.  Specifically, these ones:

I also plan on purchasing this expansion deck once it becomes available.  Another nice thing about the expansion decks, is that each card, from each expansion has their own tiny logo on the front of the card that tells you it's from an expansion deck.  In case you want to play with the standard deck and not The Guild or Monster Enhancers deck, you can easily find them within the massive stack.  It's a great, simple little idea.  Oh, oh, oh!  And the expansion decks are all relatively inexpensive at only ~$5, or there abouts, depending on the deck.

One of the things that drew me to this game (or really, buying the game), was that upon further examination, all of the decks are the same.  You could go out and buy five copies of the Munchkinomicon and all 15 cards in the pack are all the same 15 cards.  There are no "rare" cards.  Sure, you can buy the Boxes of Holding which come with two additional cards that you can't acquire on their own, but they're not going to be the rare cards like in Magic: The Gathering that are "so rare" that they'll fetch hundreds of dollars.  Sorry, correction, thousands of dollars.  You can also purchase blank cards to come up with your own rules of sorts that will blend in with the rest of your deck.  And everyone plays with the agreed upon deck.  If you introduce a card that no ones seen before, it goes in the deck with all the other cards.

Something that I find interesting, is that I went into this post intending to talk about my most recent trip to a new gaming store to buy some d10 dice for some rounds of Munchkin that Conklederp, Coolman and I played last night, but that somehow turned into this conker of a post.  On Monday I'll go into my gaming store non-adventure.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

The Brain Has It's Own Plans

Two Card Games The World Plays Wrong

I'm going to move away from video games again for this post and move into card games.  Cards are just fun things to have around at almost all times.  Years back when The Kid and I went to Disneyland, I brought a deck of cards for us to play 5 Card Draw when we were standing in line.  We even got a couple of people to play with us while in line for the Matterhorn.  This week I wanted to cover two card games, one's a single player and the other is traditionally a two player game although rules exist to have more people.  I don't remember exactly when it was that I found out that I play both Pyramid and War differently than pretty much the entire world, but it was one of those moments when I began to wonder why everyone else was playing it wrong.  Let's begin then with Pyramid.

Pyramid
I learned to play Pyramid from my Mom when I was don't know how old.  It was a simple enough concept. You deal cards out in a pyramid shape then add two cards up to 13 and remove them.  Ace = 1, King = 13, Queen = 12 and so on down.  You go through the deck once, after that, if you don't have all the cards cleared, the game's over.  It wasn't until I got my Mom a CDRom compilation of card games that I found out we had been playing the game wrong for over a decade.  And our "wrong" way of playing was so much better than the official rules.

The only variation we played with was that all the cards are faced down, except the bottom row and any cards that you uncover and are able to flip over.  I really don't understand why you would have the cards face up?  From my perspective, it would be like having the cards faced up when playing Solitaire.  I feel like having the cards face up makes the game too easy.

How I was taught how to play:

Ignore the fact that I'm missing one row of cards.

Versus how the "real" rules say how to play:

Playing this way feels like cheating.

Anyway, I guess I just suggest try playing it both ways and see which way you prefer.


WAR
I don't remember when or where I learned to play War.  My first memory was from my neighbors across the street from my parent's house when I was in 1st or 2nd grade, so it was probably some time around then.  The basic rules, I play the same as everyone else:  highest card wins; two of the same card, start a war.  It's the rules/procedure for the war though that seem to differ from everyone else I've ever played.  And, the version I've been told my numerous people, is even different than the "official" rules that are up on Wikipedia.

In traditional rules, when two players deal the same card, a war happens.  For this war, each person deals three cards face down, chooses one and that determines the war.  I've also seen it played that after you deal three cards face down, the forth card dealt is face up and that determines the outcome of the war.

The rules/procedure that I've played with, and still insist on playing with are as follows:

• Three cards are dealt face down
• Each player flips over one card at a time
• Two out of three battles wins the war
• Any war to occur during these battles negates the previous battle count.

I just find this way of playing War and Pyramid to be more interesting.  It could also be that phenomenon when you prefer something the way you learned it, or the version of a song you heard first.  I'm sure that's a real phenomenon but I can't think of what it's called or find it on the internet, but I know it's real because my brain told me so.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

The Voices Are Subletting Again.

It's Not Paranoia If They Really Are Watching You

If it's one thing that video games have taught me, it's that you can't trust the "computer" anytime you play video games against a computer controlled character.  Let's break this down so that there's some semblance of planning and cohesion.

Board Games: (Monopoly, Dokapon Journey):  I don't trust computer controlled characters.  Now way about it.  Sure there could be a logarithm that actually has the "die" roll by any player be purely random, I just don't believe it.  

I've played Monopoly enough times on the NES and SNES against the computer to feel cheated every time, especially in the die roll department.  I don't have any empirical evidence that actually says that the game cheats, I just used to feel that I was fighting an uphill battle when it came to 1 player Monopoly.  Like how their Thimble or Car piece will magically move over my properties while I will frequently land on theirs.

Dokapon Journey on the other hand, sigh.  Penny Arcade does a great job of summing up the "theory" behind the game, but the game's execution isn't all there.  Imagine you're playing Dragon Warrior, but you're playing with three other people and you're able to get in the other players' way while everyone tries to complete the same tasks.  There's plenty of online forum bantering about how the computer characters will spin the exact number they need to get to a specific place (say, a weapon shop so you don't die in every battle and have to spend 3 turns at the church being resurrected).  The main problem I have with the computer in this game, is that it knows where to go.  Let's say a King's mission is something like "Go to the cave to find the treasure that was taken from me by the bandits."  There are 4 possible caves on the map, (and to enter a cave you have to "land" on it with the exact spin/roll number) and the computer knows exactly which ones to go to.  Anyway, don't trust the computer here.

Fighting Games:  (Street Fighter, Killer Instinct, Primal Rage)  Yes, I know there're a ton of fighting games out there, I just chose to list those three just because and put them in no particular order.  My distrust of fighting games stems from my awesome ability to get the shit kicked out of me 60% of the time.  The thing with a lot of these types of games is that you have to learn the moves for either a particular character or any number of characters (like games that use tag-teaming).  This has always been a personal problem for me in these games, which I know isn't universal.  Mainly for me it's about remembering the combination of buttons to press while trying not to get the shit kicked out of me.  And I just don't trust the computer (when the game's on "easy" settings) to accidentally screw up a combo move or to not know all the moves that that one character knows.  Although, I did like that in Killer Instinct, the AI would learn the moves that you would frequently perform, forcing the player to continually alternate their attack strategy or nothing would work.  Kind of like the Borg.

Poker/Card Games:  I learned this lesson very early on in my video gaming life.  One of the first video games that I played was Las Vegas Poker & Blackjack on the Intellivision.  All I'm going off is my memory, but I recall that I could do alright playing against the computer, but I was often convinced that the dealer would deal themselves better cards in any of four available games (5 or 7 Card Stud, 5 Card Draw or Blackjack).  Inevitably I would always end up bankrupt and then play either Astrosmash, Star Strike or Golf.

Then there were the little handheld poker and slot machine LCD games from Tiger that I would always seem to loose all my "money" on.  Tiny little hand held balls of cheating madness is what I call them.

This then brings me to Poker/Slot Machines in video games.  I don't trust them at all; like that's a shocker.  Especially in games where money or game tokens may be hard to come by (Pokemon, Dragon Quest V, Bioshock, Chrono Cross).  I always seem to play a couple of games to get the feel of them, realize that I'm not going to spend a couple of hours just in the casino when I could be out in the world map earning gold at a probably faster rate.  And I'll feel less cheated.

And now this brings me to real world video poker.  I personally don't trust the computers who control the outcomes.  I've played video poker a couple of times during a single venture while out with former employees on a unit moral building outing.  The whole time though I felt I was inside of Fear & Loathing.  I did manage to win $15 from the $5 that I was playing with, and like any person who just won, I kept playing and ended up with $0.  Which was fine with me.  I called it up to the computers winning and taking their first step in taking over the world.  

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Well Played Skynet