The Secret Lair

As you might gather if you’ve read my Castle Panic review, I really love cooperative board games.¹ For Christmas this year, we bought Forbidden Island. It’s a co-op treasure hunting adventure wherein the 2-4 players each take the role of a treasure hunter trying to recover treasures from a sinking island. As you play, different tiles will become flooded, and the overall water level will rise. Players win when they manage to recover all four treasures, make it back to the helicopter, and fly off the island. Players lose if they sink, if the water level rises too high, if the helicopter sinks, or if they become unable to recover a treasure.

Once you get used to the rules, they’re really quite simple: On each player’s turn, you take three actions, then draw treasure cards, and then sink tiles. This sequence is printed on the back of each player’s character card for easy reference. Your actions each turn can be moving your pawn one tile, “shoring up” a flooded tile, or collecting one of the four treasures if you’ve collected the requisite four treasure cards and made it to the correct spot.

On each player’s turn, cards are drawn to indicate which of the island’s 24 tiles flood. When a card is drawn, normal tiles flood, and already-flooded tiles sink, removing those areas entirely from play. This makes the game board dynamic and can change available paths. Players can un-flood flooded tiles with the “shore up” action, but sunken tiles are gone permanently.

The game quickly becomes about triage: which island tiles are critical to save and which are acceptible losses? Do we have The Pilot or The Diver to traverse that gap? How can I get closer to another player so that she can trade me the card I need on her turn?

There are six characters in the game, with names like “The Pilot”, “The Navigator”, and “The Explorer”, and each has unique abilities, adding to the game’s replayability. Randomly-assigned character cards include a single-sentence description of each character’s ability.

Forbidden Island has some very nice art on each of its cards and tiles, and is surprisingly inexpensive. The game plays more quickly than most board games, especially if the helicopter sinks during the first player’s turn. It’s not uncommon for the players to lose to the game, but I consider that a plus – who wants to play a game where there’s no question as to the outcome?

1. This is not because we haven’t yet successfully taught our daughter not to freak out when she loses a game. At least, it’s not ONLY because of that. [↩]

Image via Wikipedia

In short, LIMBO succeeds in being brutally beautiful, extraordinary, and highest quality of gaming experience.

Oh, you want more than that? Well, okay.

You wake up in a dark monotone forest as the black silhouette of a small boy with eerie glowing eyes. You don’t know who you are or why you are here, but one thing becomes clear, this world of shadow and grey is a dangerous place – beautiful, but deadly.

But, that’s okay because death is part of the learning experience on how to navigate LIMBO. And boy, does your poor character get to experience all manners of death, from giant spider like creatures who like to stab you with their huge needle-like legs, to the head maggots, who like to force you zombie-like to wander off of cliffs, to pointy things, and electrified things, and things that smash you and saw you into little bits.

Yes, it’s a short game,¹ however it is sufficiently long enough to suck you into the story as you look for the way out. And it definitely leaves you satisfied, yet wanting more. The puzzles I found were challenging, especially towards the end.² At times they were a little frustrating, but through trial and many many errors³ the solution presented itself. What helped in curbing the frustration was the exceptionally well placed check points. There’s nothing quite like finally succeeding in running a particularly horrible gauntlet only to accidentally stab yourself right afterwards and discovering you re-spawned right before the gauntlet. LIMBO may be cruel to the character, but not to the gamer; you will always re-spawn after that nasty bit you just completed. Thank the makers!

There is no soundtrack, but rather an set of ambient noises, many of which are key in achieving the correct timing for your character to navigate the various puzzles. This was one of the most effective use of sound in a game that I have come across. It forces you to listen to the game, and not to rely solely on the visuals.

Speaking of the visuals, the art for LIMBO is fantastic and completely makes the wonderful yet horribly disturbing atmosphere. I loved the little subtleties such as faint movement of the grass and the thoughtful use of light. The simplicity, I felt, did a much better job in conveying the psychological wrongness of the world than if it had been splattered in blood like so many other games. Between the world’s quiet stillness and the darkness, I found myself on edge during most of the game, always fearful of what unseen horrors lurked beneath the next shadow.⁴

Make a note, LIMBO is a huge success.⁵ This little indie game is a big winner and should be in everyone’s game collection.⁶ In fact, I suggest that this would make a fine gift for this holiday season. LIMBO is a quality game, a unique and well crafted adventure not to be missed.

1. Maybe five or six hours [↩]
2. Yes, I had to look up how to do a few – you may deduct the appropriate gamer cred. from me at this time [↩]
3. often involving dismemberment, drowning, decapitation, and impaling [↩]
4. Also, with the lights on. [↩]
5. see what I did there? [↩]
6. So long as you aren’t turned off by its morbid nature, that is [↩]

Image by thejedi via Flickr

Now that you have your pumpkins carved unlike any other on the block, and you have a selection of pumpkin ales close at hand, it’s time to have friends, minions, and overlords over for that supremely geeky pastime: Halloween Gaming!

For many years, our gaming group hosted a game on Halloween. It was either part of the currently running campaign, or more likely, a one shot adventure where the theme was horror, suspense, and attempted terror. Anything could happen, and often did. Unfortunately, everyone knew it was Halloween, and we were long time gamers, inspiring fear in the players was nearly impossible. For many years we searched for the perfect way to inject tension and suspense into the game, all for naught. That is until one of the folks at The Game Master Show¹ found Dread and it was perfect.

Dread was designed by the people at The Impossible Dream, one of whom is Epidiah Ravichol, the creator of Time & Temp², another supremely fun game.³ It’s mechanics are simple, and yet inject tension into games like none other I have played. It doesn’t use dice, rock, paper, or scissors⁴, cards, or any of the other normally used conflict resolution methods out there. It uses… Jenga.

Yep, you heard me right, Jenga, that tower of wooden terror that most of you have in your house and if not it’s fairly cheap to pick up at your local store. Now, most of you don’t see how Jenga could evoke tension and, dare I say it, dread into your and your fellow players. Well, let me tell you then. It’s really quite simple. When you pull a block out, if the tower falls, you die.

The mechanic is genius in it’s simplicity, but the devil is in the details. Dread itself guides you through character creation by giving you a list of questions for who your character is. The GM uses these questions to craft the game around the characters, making the characters face their fears and troubles as the game progresses. When something important in the game comes up, like running from a zombie horde, being in a firefight, or even just changing a lightbulb on a ladder⁵, the GM can call for a pull from the Jenga stack. If you decide to do the pull, and the stack falls… well, you know what happens.⁶

Dread itself goes into the details of what makes a good or bad conflict to force a pull, and the way players can elect to pull or decide against it, so I won’t go into that here. I can say that the game is great, and also lends itself to all sorts of hacks. For instance: need to put time pressure on the PCs? Have them pull from the Jenga stack. They can do anything they like in the game, as long as they like, but when the stack falls time is out. If they weren’t ready by then, bad things *will* happen.

Having Dread as your Halloween game is a great way to inject some suspense and fear into your players. You can run it as a one shot, or hack it and add it to your normal game. Overall, I recommend giving Dread a try. For those of you with clumsy players or players with shaky fingers, you should practice keeping a straight face, your evil grin is showing.

1. This really isn’t a blatant plug for http://thegamemastershow.com, since the show has podfaded, really! [↩]
2. He also goes by Epi, which is also a cool name. [↩]
3. Remind me to tell you about the time when Wil Wheaton attempted to change history by attempting to make Wesley Crusher liked as a character. [↩]
4. or even lizard or Spock [↩]
5. ala Final Destination [↩]
6. If you don’t know what happens when a zombie horde catches you, then you aren’t ready for the zombie apocalypse. [↩]

Image via Wikipedia

Welcome back minions. Today we are embarking on something new, something glorious!

Stop looking at each other like that. No, it’s not another crackpot scheme. No, it’s not another unfortunate synergy! *zap*

There, now you’re all paying attention again…. someone make sure to sweep that up when we’re finished here and contact minion resources to get a replacement minion.

Where were we? Ah yes, the Plan. No, not plan, Plan, capital P. Yes.

For a while now I have been at work on something. A little here, and a little there. I put it in a drawer for a while and on going back to look at it, it’s amazingly near complete and yet at the same time depressingly far from completion.

What is this thing you ask? Why it’s a role playing game! Some of you long running minions will recognize the title: Vegas After Midnight.

Why do I bring this to you now? Glad you asked!

I plan on chronicling the journey, much like Overlord Miller has with his weight loss, of bringing this work from concept to publication. I’ll get into the nitty gritty, the nuts and bolts, the trials and tribulations, of the work and process of everything that goes into the making of Vegas After Midnight ( VAM ). Hopefully, you will be up to giving your mandatory level of interest and enthusiasm, which I will tell you for this project is quite high.

We have to have a starting point, so let me give you that. First though, a little back story.

Several years ago, there was a podcast The House of the Harping Monkey, the proprietor of which was one Mick Bradley. Our own Overlord Miller was a host as well, though he went by “Christopher” or “Chris” back then. Mick is the braintrust behind Vegas After Midnight, the progenitor. On The House of the Harping Monkey, he released a series of short audio clips from one Micky Dylan, a sort of narrator, or bard if you will, of the setting. I was hooked already, but then he said he would be starting up a play by post game on that podcast’s message boards. The hook was set.

When he called for characters, I wrote up a short story of my character hopeful, Vic Dylan. Yes, I had the hubris to try to be Micky’s brother in the setting. Somehow, either my writing, the story, or just the sheer pluck of the idea that Vic was Micky’s brother got me into the game. Unfortunately, as many internet games go, it died before it was truly started.

Fortunately though, the bug in Mick’s brain over VAM wouldn’t let him go. He remembered my story, and we had become friends in the interim, he asked if I would like to partner with him on writing the setting for actual publication. Of course, I said yes.

That was the start of a busy year of email, IM, skype chats, and several cross state trips. In the space of which we hacked on the FATE system, put together the back story behind the setting of Vegas After Midnight, and came up with characters and the groups they belonged to. It was an amazing time.

What happened then? Life. Both of us were drawn into things going on outside of gaming and podcasting. I changed jobs, and was still raising two little ones. Mick had clients to appease and two of his own to attend to.

Fast forward about two years, to Gen Con 2011. There Mick and I got a chance to get together again, and his mere mention of VAM lit the fire in me again, and so, here we are.

I have been getting my files and things together, pulling out my copies of Spirit of the Century, and now Bulldogs, and getting to work on what I like to call my Year of FATE. Things are tougher now for me, since I have other things pulling at me in the rest of my life, but this *will* get done. To help me get there, I need you.

What do I need you for? I need to find artists. I need to find an editor. I need to find writers. Mostly however, I need you to keep me honest and moving. Mostly moving.

So at least once a month, I will be posting my status on the project. I may post more, but only if there is something of substance to post. If I don’t post for a month about VAM, I expect you to call me on it. Do you hear? Don’t make me zap another one of you. Really, don’t make me, the ash is setting off my allergies.

*achoo!*

I recently completed Mass Effect 2, which to me is tied with Dragon Age: Origins as the best game that Bioware has ever produced, for a number of excellent reasons. Warren Schultz recently reminded me of one of those reasons, which is from perhaps the most delightfully hilarious scene in the game:

Incorporating songs from Gilbert and Sullivan musicals – especially “I Am The Very Model Of A Modern Major-General” from The Pirates Of Penzance – into speculative fiction, be it as part of the plot, pastiche, or mashup, is a bit of a tradition. Star Trek: The Next Generation did it twice, once in the episode “Disaster” when Dr. Crusher encourages Geordi La Forge to sing a bit of the “Major-General”, and the other in the movie Insurrection, which involves Captain Picard singing “The British Tar” from the musical HMS Pinafore. In an episode of Babylon 5, Marcus sings some of the “Major-General” to annoy Franklin, with an amusing extended outtake of the song during the credits that follow:

Here, the entire original “Major General” song is mashed up with scenes involving General Grievous from Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith. It’s a bit obvious and done only adequately, but that makes it a better thing than the original film itself:

The Mass Effect 2 scene is outstanding for a number of reasons, including the brilliant pastiche, the work of the actors, and the comedic timing. However, the thing that puts it over the top for me is how it’s casually established that Mordin Solus is clearly knowledgeable about human musicals, adding further depth to his character. This best illustrated by his offhanded remark about how he always performed the patter songs in musical productions, a style of song that Gilbert and Sullivan often made use of in their work:

It’s these subtle character moments, adding richness and humor to the people you interact with, that really make Mass Effect 2 succeed as an impressive work of speculative fiction entertainment. I’ll have more to say about that and other Bioware games in the near future, but for now, you should go here and check out this scene of Batman & Robin & Gilbert & Sullivan – be sure to mouse over the image for more “Major-General” pastiche goodness in the alt-text. (Hat tip to Jared Axelrod for retweeting that from Bully!)

J.C. Hutchins is an award-winning fiction and nonfiction storyteller, with 15 years of professional writing experience.  His two novels – 7th Son: Descent and Personal Effects: Dark Art — were published in 2009 by St. Martin’s Press.

Hutchins is a successful New Media storytelling pioneer and marketer, best known for his innovative use of written fiction, podcasting, video and fan-fueled crowdsourcing to create thriller stories, which he distributes online.  With more than 5 million episodic downloads of his fiction to date, Hutchins is one of the most popular “podcast novelists” in the world.  His work has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR’s Weekend Edition, Fast Company, Starlog, the BBC, Time.com, AdWeek.com, Wired.com UK, and BoingBoing.net.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 32:50 — 30.1MB)

The zombie apocalypse.  Many have written about it, visualized it, studied it, but only the mind of J.R. Blackwell could create a live game pitting live humans against zombies in real life settings. Listen now to Overlord Miller’s interrogation of  the lovely Ms. Blackwell about her new game, the mechanics within, and the Kickstarter project to get it all started. The Secret Lair presents: Shelter In Place.

Related articles

• J.R. Blackwell – Bringing Zombies to the Masses (blogher.com)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 20:28 — 18.7MB)

WITNESS the glory of PAX 2011 through the eyes of Roving Reporter Natalie Metzger on our new YouTube Channel!

OR…you know… Watch below.

Unfortunately, the How to Build a Ray Gun, part 4, is postponed for yet another geek mecca, GenCon 2011!

Ambiance

GenCon was held this year in August, from the 4th through the 7th. It happens every year around this time, which is inconvenient if you also want to go to Dragon*Con.

This year, I went down after work on Wednesday and got in late. Not to late to hang out with some fellow gamers, however. I got together with several people who I haven’t seen in at least a year. I won’t list them all here, or else I’ll have a post of just names.

You may remember our earlier talk on the San Diego Comic Con and the CCCLs. Most of the CCCLs might apply to Dragon*Con, but not to GenCon. GenCon is a totally different beast. However, CCCL #4 is definitely one to adhere to. If there are things in the dealer hall, or special guests you would like to meet, plan that out early.

I actually missed the chance to get the new Abney Park RPG, since it sold out quickly. Which, in hindsight, was very good luck for my wallet.

The first night was reconnecting with friends, and getting ready for the rest of the con. Thursday was my first real day at the convention. One thing I was grateful for, was having my badge mailed to me. I still needed to pick up tickets for Shelter In Place that I ordered, but that was a Saturday night game. So I had plenty of time.

The Will Call line on Thursday and Friday mornings were long! Definitely get things shipped to you if you can. It makes for less line waiting overall. Unlike SDCC, GenCon isn’t about the waiting in lines.

Thursday I browsed the convention great hall. The place of merchants of role-playing games, board games, card games, and costuming galore. This year seemed bigger than most others, and my wallet was sadder for it.

Something new, other than games, that they did in the hall was moving the artist alley out into the middle of the hall, and removing the ropes from it. This allowed convention goers to weave up and down the aisles of artists more freely. I’m not sure how the artists liked it, but I sure appreciated the more central location, and it looked like a great deal of patrons did as well.

Gaming at Gen Con

I also met up with some great people from Third Eye Games, makers of Part Time Gods and Apocalypse Prevention Inc. I played in a game of Part Time Gods with the creator, Eloy Lasanta, and had a blast. Given that it was a convention game, it got way over the top, but that endeared it to me even more. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to pick up a copy at the time, so it’s on my list of future games.

Friday I played in a session of Hollow Earth Expeditions, with a twist. The twist was the setting, set during the Cuban missile crisis with a dysfunctional version of Johnny Quest’s family, it was an amazing and fun game. To give you some feel for it, I played D.A.W.G., the family robot dog. His personality was described to me as a cross between K-9 from Doctor Who, and Bender from Furturama. … Now that that’s sunk in, you should have an idea for the hijynx that ensued.

Saturday I played in my first game of Lady Blackbird. I couldn’t have asked for a better crew to have played it with. I played with Mick Bradley, Chris Perrin, Amanda Valentine, and Clark Valentine. Daniel Perez ran the game for us. Easily, this was the best game of the con for me (though Shelter In Place is a close second) and I really hope we can continue the adventure next year, or at least play something with the same crew!

The game has so much room to explore, especially when you realize that it’s just seven pages! Get a creative group together and play it, it’s free so there’s no excuse for you not playing. If you find an excuse, take it to one of the re-education rooms and let them explain why you are wrong.

Saturday night, and into Sunday, I played Shelter In Place. I’ve played in LARPs before. I’ve played in LARPs with zombies before. Never have I actually scared about the zombies in a LARP. Shelter In Place changed that. It was an awesome time, and everyone really got into the game. The rules really give a feeling of urgency to the game.

The first act of Shelter In Place, the humans have the upper hand. They can easily kill a zombie one on one, and as long as they move quickly and don’t get caught by a few there isn’t much risk. In act two and three though, the zombies start to get the upper hand. Humans have to think, and have to really help each other in order to survive. If you like zombie movies, and LARPing, you need to get this book. Plus, look at that cover! The inside is beautiful as well.

As you can tell, I didn’t do a whole lot of gaming at the “Best Four Days in Gaming.” Why? I went this year to hang out with friends, and play a few select games. I accomplished that, and look forward to next year. Will I play more games? Probably, but only if I can get crews as good as those I had this year.

 Swag!

When I go to GenCon, I find it impossible to leave without getting something. This year was no different. I was enticed to get several things for myself and my family while visiting the great hall, and even some outside of it.

I’ll give you a list of the things that I bought, and let you all ponder over the reasons for them. Perhaps later I will give you the truth, but for now let your imagination take over.

Games:

• Bulldogs
• Shelter In Place
• Doctor Who RPG
• Agents of S.W.I.N.G.
• Hit a Dude
• Lady Blackbird

Other:

• Pink Cheshire Cat hats (2)
• Music from Marc Gunn
• Star Wars chopsticks

Inspiration

GenCon for me in the last few years has been about friends and energy. It never fails to inspire me year after year. This year was no different.

This Just In From GenCon! is a twice daily podcast that gives people who can’t make it there an idea of what is going on. It has people from the industry on, and there is always something that gets me jazzed for gaming and game design on it.

An old project of mine, Vegas After Midnight (brainchild of Mick Bradley’s), is coming back. Mick Bradley, who some of you out there may remember, and I are going to start it up again. Hopefully we’ll have people playtesting it soon, though when it will be done falls under the mantra of “It’s done when it’s done.”

Next Year?

Am I going next year? I’m not sure, since I have a lot of other travel plans. If I can’t end up going, I will definitely miss it. If I do go, I hope to see you all there!

Dear Duke Nukem Forever,

I’ve been giving your offer a lot of thought, and I’m not going to go out with you.

Since we had that whirlwind relationship in the past, I do think I owe you an explanation. We dated steadily about 15 years ago, and believe me, you were seriously funny and talented. Your selection of weapons and gear was at turns satisfying and inventive, which is what I want out of a first person shooter. Your gameplay was solid too, although I always thought that Doom’s was better overall, which is why I insisted on an open relationship. And yes, even though I stopped seeing you after about a year, I’ve occasionally gone out with one of the Doom siblings pretty regularly since then. It’s a good thing you’re not the jealous type.

I think what attracted me to you originally was your “bad boy” image. Especially in 1996, it was an alluring thing for a game to be so leading edge, and so crude. You used colorful language. You showed me strippers, although there were pixelated pasties instead of nipples. You even promised a boss enemy that you’d take off his head and, uh, defecate down his neck, and you did just that, reading a newspaper all the while. I suspect that you were trying to be the ultimate action hero, and be as sexy as possible for what you thought your potential partner-gamers were: young men with a low brow sense of thrills and humor.

I have fond memories of our time together, so when I found out that you were coming back on the scene, I really wanted to hear from you. A couple of weeks ago you hit the market again, so to speak, and rang me up, but I suddenly became a little worried. I mean, you’ve been through a decade and a half of plastic surgery with numerous surgeons, and as a doctor I know that’s never a good sign. So, I delayed in saying yes, and you’ve gone out with numerous people in the interim. They tell me that my fears are correct; the surgeries didn’t improve anything in terms of your gameplay or graphics, and in some cases have left some pretty ugly scars, such as immensely long load times.

I’d be willing to overlook all of that, just to have a date or two to relive the good old days. Unfortunately, it sounds like there’s another thing about you that hasn’t changed: your attitude. You strode back out on the dating scene with the same shtick, expecting people to find you just as hot and irresistible as we did in the late nineties. I am told that you show female nipples. You let us help you aim your pee into a urinal. You allow us to slap a stripper’s bottom, or better yet, smack alien breasts that are growing from a wall. Many of your recent dates have found these things to be, frankly, rather offensive. These things don’t offend me, but they just strike me as sad. Silly. Stupid.

See, I’ve grown up a bit since last we met, and more importantly, games and gamers have too. Part of why people were attracted to you was that you advanced first person shooter gameplay and mixed it with risque content in a novel way. Games have improved vastly since your heady 3D days, and if your graphics and gameplay haven’t kept up, then I can’t imagine our date being that enjoyable. Moreso, that group of young men with a low brow sense of thrills and humor that you think are so into you? It turns out they aren’t your main audience anymore. Almost three quarters of the US population plays video games, of which almost half are women and the average age is 37. In any case, for those of us that want crude humor or sexy titillation, there are better dates to be found for far cheaper in other places online or in person.

That’s not to say that with a lot more work, you’d have a chance in the future. I still enjoy partying with a rough, hunky action hero-style shooter. Serious Sam is over the top and has a mouth on him, but he’s immensely fun to play and amusing without being stupidly crude. It’s just that now you just aren’t talented or funny enough in 2011 to be worth even a simple fling. Here’s my advice: go find a better, dedicated surgeon to do some major structural work on you, as well as a good psychiatrist to help you through some of your maturity issues, and I might give you the time of day. That said, I suspect you won’t be able to give up your past enough to be relevant in the present, and that just makes me sad. Good luck on your future endeavors!

Regards,

The Bad Doctor (who’s not as easy as you think)