Nuns on the Run and Real Life Mini-Games (We Didn't Playtest This At All and Bounce It-In Game)

As much as I loved summarizing both Lost and The Pacific, it's time to get back to what I came here to do. POST GRATUITOUS NUDES... I mean, review board games. Yes, that's what I mean.

Nuns on the Run

There are some games that are pretty friendly to new players. Games like Alhambra and Ticket to Ride are all in a category of "gateway" games that allow new players to be on more even terms with veteran gamers. Not to say that they're easy, but they are easier to learn than a lot of other games. With gateway games it's almost never too late for a player to figure out how to recover from a deficit and perhaps even win. "Forgiving" would be a better term for these games than "simple" or "easy". Nuns on the Run might be simple to learn, but it is far from forgiving.

The game plays like Scotland Yard or Fury of Dracula in reverse. Instead of a solitary villain trying to evade a team of players, the team of players are trying to avoid capture by two senior nuns, the Abbess and Prioress. The theme of the game is light and cute, as the team of players are young nuns escaping from their cells in the abbey to fulfill a "secret wish". No, not that kind of "secret wish" you perverts. The various goals of the nuns are innocent pleasures, like a soft mattress or a midnight snack, and the nuns must go out into the abbey to find them. There are several steps to fulfilling a nun's secret wish, and should any of the nuns succeed, the entire nun team wins. Meanwhile, the Abbess and the Prioress are both on the prowl looking for disobedient nuns. Should they detect a nun, they can hunt them down in an attempt to catch them. The nun must then return to her cell, and the chase begins again. The Abbess/Prioress team need to make six captures in all in order to win, or dawn must arrive without the nuns returning to their cells with their secret wish.

While the theme is cute and I love the reversal on the Scotland Yard mechanic, the game is imbalanced as the Abbess/Prioress team has a tough time trying to find and catch the nuns. The A/P team must walk through the abbey on a preselected path that is public knowledge. They are only allowed to deviate from that path when a nun is detected. From there, the Abbess or Prioress can attempt to pursue the nuns to find and capture them. I say both find and capture, because simply finding a nun isn't enough for the A/P team. They must also land in the same space as the quarried nun. This can make for an Abbess or Prioress getting distracted with one nun, while the other nuns make a dash for their goals. It also discourages the A/P team from working as a team, since getting the Abbess and Prioress tied up pursuing one nun is a futile exercise. Once one or two nuns are on their way back to their cells, the game is essentially over and it's impossible for the A/P team to recover. This is the definition of unforgiving.

I'm not sure how to fix the game as it is. Perhaps giving the Abbess and Prioress more movement options would help, or a broader range of detetion. Overall this is a game I want to like, but it feels incomplete at the moment.

Mini-Games?

There are a growing number of actual real-life mini-games. Games that both take minutes to learn and minutes to play. Generally these games are mostly seen at big gaming gathering, where one group has just finished their game and are now waiting on another group to finish whatever they're playing. That's where these mini-games come in. Games like We Didn't Playtest This At All and Bounce It-In Game are both excellent examples of games that make for great time wasters in-between larger more complicated games.

We Didn't Playtest This At All

While at PAX East, I was introduced to Fluxx. The game reminded me of Risk, in that you could be potentially playing for a long time and strategy was largely absent. In both games it comes down to who gets the right random cards at the right random moment. Random is fine, but I don't like playing a game for an hour where the circumstances for victory are essentially arbitrary. You can't plan for anything, so it comes down to luck. We Didn't Playtest This At All (WDPTAA) is very much the same game as Fluxx except it takes 5 minutes to play, tops. The both games have random and hilarious cards that make your opponents do some pretty awesome stuff, and winning comes down to luck as well. There is, however, a minimum of a time commitment and many games of WDPTAA can be played for one game of Fluxx. This little game is awesome, and I highly recommend it.

Bounce It-In Game

Another simple game, but this time involving random dexterity rather than cards. Bounce your balls into the target. You get points if it stays in the tray, and you get even more points if you land on your own color. Think beer pong for kids, although you could add booze if you wanted.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, and this video runs at around 20 frames a second, well that's a whole lot of fucking words. :D

 

Again, great little game that's worth far more than the time you actually play.

Lost

Polarizing doesn't even begin to describe the effect that Lost has had on the television landscape. Even now that it is over the show that seemingly made serial dramas cool again is still divisive in the popular opinion, with most people either loving or hating the series finale. After six seasons of wildly varying quality, it's not easy to classify Lost as simply "Bad" or "Good". I'd say more "Good" than "Bad", but we'll get into that later.

People like to say that Lost heralded the return of the science fiction serial. Given that the most popular shows of the 2004 were procedural series consisting of largely stand-alone episodes like Cold Case and CSI, it's easy to see why so many would love to pin the instantly popular Lost as the show that brought back science fiction serials to TV. People seem to forget that it was shows like Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Babylon 5, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (2nd Season), and Carnivale that brought the return of season or even series long story-arches and complicated sci-fi/fantasy mythologies back to television. You also can't mention the impact of Lost without also mentioning Battlestar Galactica. Battlestar premiered the month after Lost, with its own set of interesting characters and epic story. Despite its flaws, Battlestar Galactica was superior in both the story it told and how it told it.



Out of all those shows, Lost was poised to be the most commercially successful. Its first season was very well done, and its momentum carried into the early portions of the second season. The characters were interesting, the story was moving along at a good pace. The cliffhanger at the end of the first season was one of the most memorable in TV history. Then something happened that as a viewer and a fan I didn't expect. Lost got bad. Not just bad, but abysmally awful. The story ground to a halt and instead of resolving the questions that had already been posed to the audience regarding the mysteries of the show, more questions were piled on. Going into the 2nd season finale, I'd almost given up on the show. After that point, the show finally found its rhythm again, and Lost had more good episodes than bad. The creators of the show even announced that Lost would only run for six season, which I found encouraging as they would eventually be forced to resolve the riddles of the island. Still, I never got the feeling that the story was in capable hands and worried that the show would end with important questions still left unanswered.

Unfortunately and unsurprisingly, the show has ended and there are important questions that the creators of the show didn't even bother to address. While the characters of the show have all been given absolution and we now know all of their stories the place that the story was set, the island itself, remains plagued by an annoying lack of information. I've always found the mythology of Lost to be the most interesting aspect of the show, but the creators of Lost seem to disagree with me. They want me to be concerned with the characters, and go so far as to constantly label their show as "character-driven". As a result Lost has sometimes neglected to address the grand mysteries of the island and its denizens in favor of smaller more trivial matters like Jack's tattoos, Kate's crimes, and Sawyer's cons. After an entire series of these kinds of story choice, one wonders whether the minds behind Lost are even capable of answering a straight-forward question in direct terms. Instead, the creators have used the vaguest of answers in relation to the greater mysteries of island's nature. At this point, the notion of a "character-driven" show seems like merely an excuse for lazy or non-existent exposition.



Just as an example, it's like the creators of Lost have just served you a cake. You taste it, and get curious about it:

You: Mmm... this cake is delicious! How'd you make it?
Lost: I baked it.
You: ... Yes, I see that. Um, what's in this cake? I'd love to know the ingredients!
Lost: I baked it IN AN OVEN.
You: I see....
Lost: IT WAS A KENMORE.

One of the more infuriating flaws with the show was the interactions of the characters with each other, or more to the point, the lack of interaction. Many times over the course of the series, characters would be in possession of information that could help in the revelation of a mystery, and would purposefully (and many times illogically) with hold it from the rest of the characters. This would also often happen between characters that were supposed to be on the same "side". Secrets were long kept hidden from both other characters and more importantly, the audience, for no good reason.



This circumstance of sub-par finales seems to be a recurring theme with shows that have a supernatural component to them. When you look at more grounded shows and their finales, like The Wire and it's sublime "-30-", you get a satisfaction that you've been told a great story and can now move on. Shows like The X-Files, Buffy, Quantum Leap, and to a lesser extent Angel, all suffered from lackluster finales. Questions still linger, and there's no way anyone's getting a better answer than they've been given. An exception to this is the fantastic Deep Space Nine finale of "What You Leave Behind" that delivered despite its supernaturally spiritual themes.

All this said, there was definitely more good than bad over Lost's run. Several of the characters, such as Sayid, Sawyer, Hurley, Eko, Juliet, Frank, and Miles all grew on me. It's no surprise that all of my favorite characters have one thing in common in that they were all the most direct in questioning the secrets of the island and the other characters, especially Sayid, Eko, and Frank. Sun and Jin, but mainly Sun, were also among the characters that I enjoyed seeing week to week. When Lost did get around to solving a big puzzle, the results were the best moments of the show, and it's unfortunate that the finale did not do this to the extent that would've liked. The finale bordered on being grossly emotionally manipulative, and almost seemed to be trying to cover its lack of information with the farewell of these characters that we've been following for six season. The island itself and the power it wielded was by far the most interesting aspect of the show. Even now, the mysteries and questions that surround what could be described as a insignificant speck of turf in the Pacific continues to capture the imagination and doesn't stop being a source of fascination.



So what could've made Lost and its finale better? After seeing the entire series, it's plainly obvious that the story of Lost could've been told in a much shorter span. I mentioned Battlestar Galactica earlier as the superior to Lost, and one of the big reasons for this was the time it took to tell its story versus Lost's time to tell a similarly complex story. Lost ended up with 121 episodes over 6 seasons to Battlestar Galactica's 75 episodes over 4 seasons. While each season was about the same length, BSG chose to end its run after four seasons, and this was for the best. It kept the writers on-task, and helped to keep the pace brisk and the story focused. The story of Lost, with all of its repeating themes and unnecessary diversions, could have been told in an even smaller amount of time. I'm thinking that 3 seasons of 20 episodes would have been sufficient to cover the tale that we ended up getting from Lost.

In the end if you've never seen Lost, don't start now. Don't worry about it until you've seen some of the other shows I've mentioned here. Don't bother until you've seen Serenity, Band of Brothers, The Pacific, and Arrested Development. After you've seen all that and you're still curious, add Lost to your Netflix queue and have at it. If you started Lost, but gave up along the way, you'd might as well finish now. Perhaps one of these days I'll write up an Essential Episodes of Lost guide for the good of the TV watching public, because for all its flaws there is some really good stuff to be found in Lost. Until then, namaste.

The Pacific

Whenever I tell someone that I'm currently watching "The Pacific", the first question I'm always asked is usually something like "So is 'The Pacific' as good as 'Band of Brothers'?". This is a deceptively easy question, and my usual answer has so far been a very simple "No." This is usually followed by a look of disappointment on the other person's face, as they begin to process what I've said and what that means. Generally it's taken to mean that "The Pacific" is not worth watching, but that's not what I mean at all.

When you get down to simple terms, the latest offering from the team that brought us the epic and sublime Band of Brothers doesn't quite measure up. That said, the bar was set so high by "Band of Brothers" that it would be difficult for any mini-series to meet or exceed those kinds of expectations. That said, The Pacific is worth watching, and does an excellent job in telling it's story. What must be understood is that "Band of Brothers" and "The Pacific" are not only different stories about different people, they're different kinds of stories altogether.

"Band of Brothers" was based on the book of the same name by Stephen Ambrose. The narrative mainly follows one character, and from there you get moments and sometimes entire episodes devoted other individuals. As characters are introduced, they fade out of the spotlight to let different characters get to the forefront, but stick around and continue to grow with the rest of the cast. This was a masterful method to provide development to literally an army of personalities, and by the end you care about each and every one of them. While the main character of the series never changes, you're still able to get to know the people around him by the end.

Conversely, "The Pacific" is based on the memoirs of three different Marines and their tours in the Pacific War. Robert Leckie's Helmet for My Pillow provides insight on the opening actions of the Marines at Guadalcanal to the bloody battle of Peleliu. With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa and China Marine by Eugene Sledge both cover Peleliu, Okinawa, and the post-war actions of the 1st Marine Division. Finally Chuck Tatum's Red Blood, Black Sand illuminates the actions of war hero John Basilone on Iwo Jima. You can see that with this breadth of source material by different authors comes a disbursement of focus between three different characters. The mini-series has not one main character, but three in Leckie, Sledge, and Basilone.

The with the focus on the actions of these three Marines, the audience is treated to an in-depth look at their motivations, their reactions, and how the events that they take part in change these men. Unfortunately, the effects of war are somewhat universal, and we also get a repeating theme of the war breaking these Marines down both during their tour and after they return home. The audience is repeatedly reminded that war is awful and it can get a little heavy handed after you see different guys going through the same trauma over and over again. This is probably a testament to the brutality that coursed through the entire Pacific campaign.

Another consequence is that none of the supporting characters ever get a chance to shine through. There are a few that stick out, but many are left to stand around in the background or simply not make it to the end of the series. Again, this is most likely a reflection of the very real and extremely high causality rate in the front-line Marine units. While the "Band of Brothers" episode "The Breaking Point" had a very visceral and direct reminder of the losses suffered by Easy Company, no such moment exists for "The Pacific". Many characters are killed on screen, and the surviving characters talk of little else than their fallen comrades. There is a moment in the last episode where a character appears to suffer some Survivor's Guilt, but this is much more subtle than the end of "The Breaking Point" in "Band of Brothers", where the company's First Sergeant Carwood Lipton tallies the fallen Easy Company members in a church. Such a scene would also not have worked as well in "The Pacific", as the audience had very little time to know these lost supporting characters.

What all this means is that "The Pacific" is a different experience than "Band of Brothers". There is both a more direct focus on a smaller number of characters, and we get to know John Basilone, Robert Leckie, and Eugene Sledge very well. On the other hand, we do not get the rich cast of supporting characters that made up Easy Company. "The Pacific" still manages to serve up more than its share of action, drama, and personal struggles just like its predecessor, and that for me is enough to recommend it.

Halo Reach Beta: Further Impressions and Pictures

This first picture has no relevance to the rest of the article. Except to say LOL FIZZIX ENGEEN. :P



Human pretzels aside, I've been having a blast so far with the beta. It simply feels good to play Halo again. The new game modes, especially Headhunter, give a fresh take on the standard "run, shoot, melee" that most of Halo is made up of. The new weapons like the plasma launcher, DMR, and needle rifle are welcome additions to the arsenal, and the new armor abilities give you more customization options than simply different colored or styled armor. Worth a special mention is the Invasion game type that pits attacking Elites vs. defending Spartans. It's a truly epic experience that can easily be sullied by poor teammates. I don't just mean unskilled (as I have no right criticizing anyone's Halo skills) I mean players that will not work towards the objective of the team, either through actions or inactions. Same is true, but to a lesser extent, for the more straight forward Invasion Slayer mode.



All that said, there are some lackluster elements to the game so far. I'll mention Modern Warfare 2 once again as a study in weapon balance, in that there are few weapons in MW2 that are complete garbage. Sure, for most situations an ACR is better than an MP5K, but thanks to perks and attachments, there are times when it's not so bad to be toting around the underpowered MP5K. Halo Reach, like all previous Halo games, has no such customizations, and thus some of the weapons are nigh useless or so overshadowed by other weapons as to not be worth using except when left no choice. Why grab a plasma repeater when a needler or needle rifle are much better options? The assault rifle is usually forced on me by my load-out, and it's the first to go when even a marginally better weapon comes along. I get the feeling that the focus rifle is supposed to be better, but it's never really worked for me. So far, that's a good percentage of the weapons that I'm just not feeling at the moment. Which is fine, because this is exactly what the beta is for.



I'm also not feeling the 3 Ports game time. Not necessarily because I've got an issue with what is essentially Territories. It's because of the constant "TERRITORY LOST" warnings that you get, even when you're taking a territory from the other team. THAT TERRITORY IS NOT LOST BECAUSE I TOOK IT AND I DON'T CARE THAT THE ENEMY LOST A TERRITORY THAT I JUST TOOK. Free-For-All Oddball is still too random to be fun.



Finally, there's Network Test 1. I'm not sure what's going on there, as the game type itself is OK. Rumor has it that it's a test of the Firefight engine over XBox Live. Should that be true, I'll be almost certainly playing a little more ODST. Even so, the objectives are interesting, and the lockdown mechanic makes defense a little more manageable.

That's all I have for now. Hopefully this Tuesday/Friday update schedule that I've got going will hold up over time. And now, here's a picture of a Spartan with a rocket penis.



CARRY ON!

Why I Roll d20s

I'd love to say that the story of how I started playing D&D and why I don't play other RPGs was a long one. Fortunately for all three of my fans, the story fits nicely into a single blog post that is easily readable in a single sitting. TAKE THAT LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY NOVELISTS!

In high school, I was a quite the geeky dude. I loved Star Wars, loved Star Trek, and played my share of video games. I even dabbled in some board games like Axis & Allies and BattleTech and had just started getting into anime. For all the nerdy hobbies that I had, you'd think that there wouldn't be things that I would look down on or avoid. Keep in mind that this was the same young me that secretly loved Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. All that said, this proto-nerd of my past self hated two things. Magic: the Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons.

My loathing of M:tG stemmed from my lack of understanding. Sure I knew that Magic players, like D&D players, weren't really using magic or conjuring dark spirits. I simply couldn't understand why people would pay a lot of money for little sheets of card board. The idea was so alien to me at the time that the whole game drew my ire. It wasn't until college and living with a lot of other Magic players that I was turned and became a fan of M:tG myself. My dislike of D&D was similar in a lot of ways. I didn't care to play a game where I pretended to be an elf gayly dancing through the woods. The idea simply didn't appeal to me.

I'd also had a marginally bad experience with D&D in the past. My mom had let me and my brother get a old D&D set from a garage sale. We cracked open the book, got out our dice, and tried to play. We really didn't understand the rules, the monster stats, building characters, or anything other than the pictures in the books. We tried "playing" but it just ended up that the "DM" (my neighbor) would just drop rocks on our heads or send dozens of Carrion Crawlers to kill us. After a little while, we got bored and abandoned the game.

Flash-forward to many years later: I'm still in school, and have taken up board games as a legitimate hobby. Board games were new and awesome, beyond the primitive concepts of Monopoly, Risk, or Clue. El Grande, Settlers of Catan, Carcassone, and a host of others brought me into a whole new world. Eventually, we tried out a game called Mage Knight.

Miniature war games had always fascinated me. I loved action figures and Legos as a kid, and these kinds of games seemed like playing with toys for older kids! War gaming was not an easy hobby to get into, and I'd always been stymied by a lack of funds and artistic talent. I couldn't buy the legions of figures required for games like Warhammer, and I didn't have the time, patience or ability to paint said figures.

Then along came Mage Knight, with its pre-painted miniatures and low entry cost. It was glorious! I became a rabid fan, buying up the figs I needed for my armies, and playing when I could. Sadly those days were numbered, as several of my playing partners moved away. I was left with no one to play with and my figures sat on a shelf collecting dust.

Eventually this friend moved back to attend law school, and he brought with him a renewed desire to play Dungeons & Dragons. As it turns out, many of my friends here had played D&D in the past, but there was a decided lack of interest right after college. Reluctantly, I decided to learn how to play. To my shock, many of the concepts and mechanics that I had loved in games like Mage Knight were present in D&D. I learned that D&D had actually started as a tactical combat game, and that the Role-Playing elements had been added later. At its core, D&D was still all about fighting enemies on a board and that was all I needed to get hooked.

Since my first poorly-build Dragon Disciple archer to my new and awesome Goliath barbarian, I've played a lot of D&D over the last few years. We've made the transition from 3.0 to 3.5 to 4th Edition. By my estimation I've played about 30 characters and built many more for indulgence or as NPCs. I've even been a Dungeon Master on a few occasions. All this because D&D is essentially a miniatures game, and that's what I love about it. I've tried other RPGs, and while a lot of them have interesting settings I find that their lack of structure turns me off of them. I love that in D&D, I can build a wizard that will take advantage of a large group of enemies, or a paladin that does his best to keep enemies off of his less-sturdy allies.

I tell people that I like my RPGs with a lowercase r. While that's still true after 5 years of playing D&D, I've also started to embrace the backstories and motivations of my characters. Sure they might be a means by which I justify some cheesy power-gaming build, but that's still growth in my book. Playing D&D is one of my favorite things to do with my friends, and I don't see that changing any time soon.

Finally, here's Lady Naga...

Iron Man 2

For those watching this review on Wandering Gamer, thank you! Here are some additional thoughts that didn't make it into the video. Enjoy!

- Every comic book based movie franchise has a slump or decline, thanks to the amount of material that the movie is expected to cover. I've seen many potenially awesome movies get crushed by the weight of their own characters and story-arcs. Spiderman 3, X-Men: Last Stand, Batman and Robin, Wolverine, Fantastic Four, I'm looking at all y'all. Iron Man 2 has just as much material to cover, yet does it's best to remain focused and entertaining. Jon Favreau does a great job balancing the introductions of new people and expanding the characters we already know. In this respect, Iron Man 2 is stellar. Sure it's not as good as the first movie, but if this is the franchise's "slump", then it's a very well executed and enjoyable "slump".

- Speaking of new people, Scarlett Johansson's Natasha Romanoff AKA Black Widow (although she's never referred to as this) is HOT. Seriously epically hot. Also, she's very flippy with a good helping of unrealistic but entertaining acrobatic combat. I wonder who would win in a fight between Romanoff and Hit-Girl. Hmmm...

- One of the other new people is the Crimson Dynamo/Whiplash hybrid character of Ivan Vanko played by Mickey Rourke. Vanko is one of the few weak points in the movie, as just about every scene he's in and not fighting is awkward and hard to understand. No, I mean he's literally hard to understand with his mumbling Russian accent.

- Sam Rockwell turns in a decent performance as slimeball rival industrialist Justin Hammer. He's ok, but he constantly comes off as whiny and incompentant rather than a real threat to either Tony Start or Ivan Vanko. I suppose that's probably intentional, but I like my bad guys to be real challenges for the heroes. I suppose that's where Roarke's Ivan Vanko succeeds where Rockwell's Justin Hammer fails, as a suited-up and battle-ready Vanko feels like a genuine menace to Iron Man.

In the end, I'll probably go see Iron Man 2 in the theatre again. That might just be the best praise of a movie there can be.

Late Nite JengaJam Live @ PAX East: SurfaceScapes & Blawndee

Hey guys! Just thought I'd let you in on some new clips from our PAX East Edition of Late Nite JengaJam! First up, we have our chat with the SurfaceScapes team from Carnegie Mellon concerning their work with bringing Dungeons & Dragons to a Microsoft Surface...



Next up, we have a conversation with the always awesome Barbara AKA Blawndee! Watch as she shares her experience working the Rooster Teeth booth at one of the biggest cons of the year!



Also tonight on Late Night JengaJam, we interview Venture Brothers and Dr. McNinja colorist Carly Monardo! 10:30pm Eastern, right after Lost!

Halo Reach Multiplayer Beta (Gameplay Video!)