So my kids, particularly Matthew, love Anime movies.  They haven't seen very many, but they've really enjoyed classics like Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Kiki's Delivery Service, and My Neighbor Totoro.

At GenCon last week there were a number of Anime DVD vendors present, but I never got a chance to talk to someone about recommendations for kids.  Any help out there?  Are there good sites out there that provide reviews and content recommendations for Anime?  Any recommendations of specific titles?

GenCon is now over, it's hard not to be a little saddened by how quickly it wrapped up and how much I hoped to do/see but didn't have time to.  No worries; there's always next year and we have plenty of good memories from GenCon 2004.

Scheduled Gaming

I figured some folks might like to see an outside view of the convention center.  There's no way to depict the entire size of the place, but trust me it is rather large.  We never even made it to the CCG hall, which is supposed to be almost as large as the exhibit hall.

Our only scheduled event of the day was a Living Greyhawk adventure, hosted by the RPGA.  It is a bit difficult to describe what these living campaigns are about, but if you are interested I encourage you to head to the Living Greyhawk home page and explore a bit.  Think of it as a massively multiplayer RPG without the computers.

Our adventure was Castle Greyhawk, a module that is designed to handle a wide range of player levels.  We created our characters over the weekend, so we were very inexperienced.  We joined up with three other characters of similar level to try the ruins of Castle Greyhawk.  We had one problem though - our party was cleric-less!  How can you have a D&D party without a cleric!?  So, using the magical abilities of a pencil and eraser, I changed my character from a monk to a cleric in less than 10 minutes.  Even though the difficulty of this adventure was tunable to our average player level (APL), it was still quite difficult and we didn't get very far.  But we survived and gained some good experience and gold and are ready for our next Living Greyhawk adventure!  Matthew was a bit disappointed - he had fun, but in comparison to the awesome time we had playing BESM / Groundhog Recess, this was a bit of a letdown.

Demos

Jacob, Matthew, and I sat down for a demo of the Neopets TCG.  I wasn't impressed at all, but I suppose it could be a solid entry-level game for young children who you'd like to get adicted to money-sucking hobbies like CCG.  Is this a good thing?  I think Pokemon and Harry Potter are much better intro CCGs, and play very well with starter decks.

One hit for the three of us was MLB Showdown 2004.  I grew up playing tons of APBA Baseball, so this game was right up my alley; we are all baseball fans as well.  They've done a nice job simplifying the learning process, with a very simple intro game with little strategy leading to the advanced game where meaningful decisions can be made (stealing, advancing for an extra base, relief pitching, etc.).

For some reason I had a hard time convincing Jacob and Matthew to try out Heroscape, the miniatures game from Hasbro with configurable terrain.  The game is very easy to learn and has a number of scenarios included.  Most of the game is combat with miniatures, but the quality of the components and the variability of the different figures is very appealing.  This was too big to purchase and carry home, but this is a likely acquisition for us.  Perhaps a birthday present for Jacob?

As the convention drew to a close, we had about an hour of free time before driving to the north side for dinner with family.  I decided to break out Havoc, the new prototype card game designed by KC and teach it to the boys.  We had another boy join us and got through about 1.5 games.  Everyone enjoyed this poker/rummy style game very much.

Sites and Sounds

Here's a shot of the Face2Face games booth.  They have some interesting new titles out that I haven't yet had a chance to play.  They should make their booth more demo-friendly!

Here's Jacob getting ready to roll a giant d20.

This is a cool dragon that was built during the show starting from the ground up.  Sort of a paper mache thing with chicken wire.

Day 2 at GenCon is at a close, and here's my report for the day.  Today was quite different - less time at the show, and I brought Matthew and Jacob today.  We were up pretty late last night watching the Olympics, so we slept in a bit and arrived at the show around 9:15am.  I was scheduled to be on duty at Days of Wonder at 10am; we used our time to sign Matthew up for the RPGA and ask some questions about our D&D campaign on Sunday.  We are participating in a Living Greyhawk adventure, which is a pretty cool concept.  More on that tomorrow.

Things worked out well on the show floor.  I let Matthew and Jacob roam using the buddy system, checking back every 30 minutes.  They were able to get in demos of the Neopets CCG and Pirates of the Spanish Main.  I spent my entire shift on Memoir '44 this time, playing two complete games.  Both demos were converted to sales, which is always nice.  Also, while giving demos at DoW, Rick Thornquist was nice enough to stop by and chat.  I've been a big fan of Rick's writings for some time, so it was great to finally meet in person.

We did some shopping after my shift.  I picked up the new FFG game Colossal Arena, the new version of the classic Knizia Titan: the Arena.  I used a coupon at the AEG booth and purchased two starter decks of Spycraft, getting a free booster in the process. We were scheduled for an afternoon session of Big Eyes, Small Mouth (BESM), the light Anime role-playing game.  Jacob and I both wanted to own the rules to this game, so we stopped by the Guardians of Order booth and purchased the 2nd edition rulebook.  Our last purchase of the day was three GenCon t-shirts from the gift shop, also using a handy coupon.

After a quick lunch in the exhibit hall, Matthew was eager to sit in one of the Anime theaters to watch a short movie.  After scouting out each of the 4 (!) theaters for age-appropriate material, we settled on one theater and watched a show for about 25 minutes.  Good stuff, but it was part of a series so took a while to get a sense for the plot.

We wrapped up the day with our BESM session - more on the below with the photos.

I do want to commend the GenCon staff for fixing many of the problems I noticed last year (I'm sure they were widely reported).  I've seen very few lines and mixups with the events.

Scheduled Gaming

This is the RPG room where we played BESM.  There was also quite a bit of D&D going on in the same place.

The adventure we played was Groundhog Recess, an event put on by The Impossible Dream.  The setting was Advanced Dimensional Green Ninja-Educational Preparatory Super-Elementary Fortress 555, a setting that involves elementary students with often super-hero qualities and flaws.  What a perfect setting for Jacob and Matthew!  This picture is a relationship graph showing the main characters and their linkages to other people in the story.

Jacob took on the role of Timmy, a young boy that befriends a 50 foot robot.

Matthew played a furry dog that is able to walk on two legs and speak.  He also happens to be a surgeon.

That's our gamemaster Akira - he was amazing!  He kept us all entertained throughout the event.

So why the name Groundhog Recess?  Well, the plotline was that we were doomed to repeat the same recess over and over again until we determined what events we needed to prevent/change in order to restore balance to the universe.  Or at least our playground.  Oh, I played a kindergartner who also happens to be a mad scientist.

GenCon Sites and Sounds

A photo from one of my demo sessions of Memoir '44.  Hey, and that's Dale Larson on the left, creator of Cyberboard, a PBEM board gaming system for Windows.  I'm currently using that for a slow-running game (my own fault!) of Europe Engulfed.

Our lunch break in the exhibit hall.  Mmmm, healthy nachos and brats.

Who ya gonna call?

Matthew with the pirate Jack Sparrow.

Jacob and I spent our first day at GenCon Indy today, lasting from 8am until about 5pm.  Overall the experience was great; I would say better than last year.  Organization appears to be better, shorter lines, and generally happy gamers.

I did hear that people waited in long lines Thursday morning for registration (convention and individual events).  Most stories I heard involved waits of about 3 hours.  In contrast, those arriving Friday morning waited only about 15 minutes.  Now why these people don't just pre-register escapes me.  We even had our badges and event tickets mailed out, so there was zero waiting time for us this morning.

My entries for GenCon this year will be mostly photo-album oriented, but I'll try to break things down into a few categories.  If there's anything you'd like me to check out Saturday or Sunday, just leave a comment and I'll see what I can do.

Tomorrow Matthew will join us as well.  We'll stay as late as we can stand.  Our morning starts with some more Days of Wonder booth time, followed by an introductory session of Big Eyes, Small Mouth (Anime RPG).

Scheduled Gaming

Jacob and I started the morning with an 8am session of giant Seafarers of Catan.  We've played Settlers of Catan quite a bit, but had never played a Seafarers scenario.  This was a closely contested match, with the eventual winner and I neck and neck throughout the game.  He had a city and a settlement on a gold-mine with a 12-spot that was rolled over 8 times in the game.  Hard to beat that kind of resource production!

Later in the day we participated in Uberplay's small box games session.  I had been wanting to play Saga, and we found another father/son pair to join us.  Chris and Edison (who is also 9 - only 7 days older than Jacob) joined us for a great game that Jacob managed to win.  This is a pretty light card game but has some challenging strategy. Jacob beat us so soundly that I'm eager to play again to see what I was missing in my approach.  Greg Schloesser seems to have a similar opinion on this game.

Jacob and I volunteered to run demos at the Days of Wonder booth.  They produce such quality games that I couldn't resist a chance to represent them in some fashion. I taught Ticket to Ride and Memoir '44 to several groups.  Ticket to Ride, which Jacob is shown playing here, recently won the Spiel de Jahres and apparently is selling extremely well in Germany right now.

Our routine was for me to teach the game, then hand over to Jacob to play the game.  Jacob won this match of Memoir '44 (Omaha Beach scenario).

Demos

The exhibition floor opened at 10am, and Jacob and I came in with the first wave.  We were immediately intrigued by the Spycraft demos being offered there.  AEG did a great job encouraging folks to try the game, and also rewarded us with T-shirts and starter packs for two factions.

Jacob's favorite demo of the day was Pirates of the Spanish Main, the new constructible strategy game from WizKids.  This game didn't appear very deep to me, but the theme and combat really entertained Jacob.

Now this was cool - check out the custom map made for the game here.  Might be worth waiting to play on this map tomorrow.

Interesting New Releases

Bootleggers is the upcoming release about, well, bootlegging in the prohibition era.  Did you know that there's a liquor store chain in Indianapolis called The 21st Amendment?

A Clash of Kings is the newly released expansion to the fantastic A Game of Thrones boardgame.  Is this worth getting?

The new War of the Ring game set in Middle Earth is big in scale and price.

Here's a prototype for the upcoming release of Twilight Imperium, 3rd Edition.

Another view of the prototype.

Computer Games

MSN Online will be shipping their online version of Settlers of Catan around the end of this year.

We saw a demo for the new Sid Meier's Pirates, and it looks fantastic.

Here's the computer version of Axis & Allies, which appears to be a real-time strategy game set in WWII.

GenCon Sights and Sounds

This was a cool area - lots of old, unwanted CCG cards strewn about for folks to build nifty structures like you see here.

Here's Jacob with the orange lady.

Visible evidence of the merger of Uberplay Games and Eagle Games.

GameSpy has a pretty humorous interview of Stephen Colbert (of Daily Show fame) relating his experiences playing Dungeons & Dragons as a youth.  He got into the game about the same time I did.  Favorite quote:

I had an eleventh-level paladin (it took me years to advance those levels) whom I took on Expedition, and he got the Power Armor, which was the big thing to get in that module. But he also went a little power mad. On the next campaign we saw merchant caravans crossing the desert, and my character flew down and landed next to a merchant and tore off the guy's head.

The DM informed me that I was not a paladin anymore.

I said, "Oh, shit, I forgot. I'm lawful good!"

DM: "Yeah, and the gods are angry. So you're not a paladin anymore. You can start again as anything you want, but that character's done."

We were well overdue for hosting a game day at our house, so we opened our home on Sunday to a day of gaming with the ripcity folks and more.  Turnout was outstanding - Doug & Mimi, KC & Rita, Kevin Graham, Ken Rude, and Mike Deans were all on hand.  Also joining us was Tim Isakson, a recent Portland transplant from Dallas.  I gamed with Tim last year in Dallas, and Tim is already well acquainted with several folks in my gaming circle.

Jenna and Charisma provided plenty of entertainment for Jacob and Matthew.  Here's their rendition of YMCA after a bit of dress-up play.

Doug, Mimi, Kevin, and Tim were first to arrive.  I knew several others would be arriving shortly, so I set them up with La Strada and explained the rules.  This is a very easy game to teach and is quite enjoyable (I've played it once so far), and response was favorable from the crew.  The usual first reaction when someone finishes this game is “wow, I can't believe it's over already.”  It does play very quickly (about 20-30 minutes) and you can't sit idle waiting for your chance to score.  Great enjoyment/time factor in this game though.  Kevin was the victor with 26 points.

Kevin (the unknown gamer), Doug, Mimi, and Tim finishing up a game of La Strada.

KC, Rita, and Kevin arrived shortly after I started the La Strada game, and we brought out one of Rita's favorites: Gold Connection (see also this article) by Sid Sackson.  This is a press-your-luck game ala Can't Stop, but with a bit more strategy.  Players cruise around a series of gold vaults stealing gold bars and trying to build sets of a particular color (!) of gold.  Within a vault, you can choose to steal as much gold as you like, but you must roll two dice and get a number higher than the sum of the face values on the gold bars plus the distance from your starting location.  So if I'm 1 space away, and want to steal two bars of gold with 1 & 2, I need to roll a 4 (1 + 1 + 2).  If you are successful, you get to add these to your collection.  Fail and you not only lose those but any others you've accumulated this turn.  You do get a consolation token if you fail, which can later be used to add to a die roll.

Ken, KC, Rita and I play Gold Connection as Julie looks on.

There's a bit more to the game than that, particularly around the scoring and building sequences within a color, but you get the idea.  I was the winner this time.  Very much a luck-driven game, but the same tension found in Can't Stop and I'd love to play this one again.

Doug, Mimi, Tim, and Kevin played Desert Oasis next.  This is a solid game with 4 or 5 players.  I taught this one to the group as nobody had played before; Doug pulled out the victory.

Ken, Julie, KC, Rita and I then played KC's card game Tres Amigos (and here).  KC has made some great tweaks to this Euchre-style trick taking game themed with the great Chevy Chase movie.  The reward for going nill (El Guapo) is not as high, and the player choosing this must take the turned-up trump card.  This makes for a much more balanced game and creates tougher choices.  In one case, I had a hand that I was fairly certain would win all the tricks.  The challenge is you must bid with the highest card to get the right to score this way, which means you are giving up some hand strength.  I didn't quite bit high enough, and Rita was able to overbid me and try and go for El Guapo.  With my hand as strong as it was, it was a sure thing for her.  In hindsight I should have layed down one of my higher cards; I take it out of the game and would still have taken 4 tricks easily.  I still managed to win the game, though it was very close.

Tres Amigos!

Rita, Kevin, Mimi, Julie, and Ken play San Juan.  Ken was the victor.

The one game I wanted to be sure to play was Goa, the new “gamer's game” designed by Ruediger Dorn.  Goa has had very favorable reviews (currently ranked at about an 8 on the 'geek), and has the sort of depth I really like.  Doug, Tim, and KC had all played before; Tim apparently A LOT, so I had some good teachers to bring me along.

When playing a game with this much depth, I typically tune out about half the rules explanation at the start, figuring that I'll learn as I go and folks will help be along the way.  There's a learning curve for this game, but everything makes intuitive sense and the pieces fit together nicely.

Goa reminds me of Industria and Princes of the Renaissance.  Auctions serve as the primary mechanic, and there appear to be many routes to victory.  Like Puerto Rico, it seems (first blush - not sure if this has proven itself) that a highly adaptive strategy is required.  The best approach most likely will not be the same from game to game.  I thought this game was much better than Industria though, and at least as good as Princes.  I kept wanting to do more on my turn - very tough choices.

A fumbled my way through the game and held up reasonably well.  Tim was the runaway winner with 43 points, Doug 37, KC 36, and Chris 35.  I can't wait to play this one again - it is at least an 8 for me.

Doug, Tim, KC and I played Goa.

I was a bit disappointed to miss out on a playing of Princes of Florence, a game that has been sitting unplayed on my shelf for about six months.  Kevin was the teacher and the winner.

Mike showed up later in the afternoon after refing some soccer.  He challenged Jacob to a home & home contest of Memoir '44.  They played the Sainte Mère-Eglise scenario, alternating Axis/Allies.  Jacob won both times.  According to Mike, “Jacob rolled lots of grenades, I rolled lots of flags.”  Sure...

My final game of the day was a first try at KC's latest card game titled Havoc.  This is the most strategic card game KC has designed, and will likely become my favorite.  I hope to get in a few plays at GenCon this coming weekend.

Players try to build their hands rummy style, trying to produce strong poker hands of up to six cards that will be used to fight a series of battles (the backdrop is the 100 years war).  At any time on a player's turn, he can cry havoc and engage in the next battle.  The winner of the battle will always win victory points, and depending on the battle 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc. may also win points.  When a havoc is declared, a player must play at least two cards that will end up as all or part of their poker hand.  Each player in turn then either passes or lays down at least two cards.  If a player opts out of the battle, he draws a card as consolation.  Once all players pass, the played cards are compared for the best poker hand (6 card straight flush, 6 of a kind, etc. all the way down to high card).  The best hand wins the battle.

KC also added an interesting twist - the “dogs of war”.  In the midst of a battle, a player may play a special dog card that doesn't count toward the player's hand, but at the end of the battle can be used to fetch a visible card.  A nice addition that adds a strategic element.

Our game was close - KC finished with 27, Chris 26, Tim 17, and Doug 13.

Doug, Tim, KC, and Chris cry Havoc.

Ken, Rita, Mimi, and Mike play Too Many Cooks.  This particular round was funny - everyone bid to take no tricks!  Ken was the victor.

Well, we were able to able to pack in a ton of high quality games in an afternoon.  A nice prep for GenCon - expect to see daily reports from me over the weekend.

This is mostly for my own reference, but here's my schedule at GenCon this weekend:

Friday, August 20

• 8-10am -Giant Seafarers of Catan (Jacob and I, BG00354)
• 10am - noon - Gamebase7 - we'll be hanging out!
• noon-2pm - Work at Days of Wonder booth (Jacob and I)
• 3-4pm - Uberplay small box games (Jacob and I, BG00905)

Saturday, August 21

• 10-noon - Work at Days of Wonder booth (Jacob and I)
• 1-5pm - Groundhog Recess, Big Eyes / Small Mouth (Jacob, Matthew, and I, RPG00120)

Sunday, August 22

• 8-1pm - Castle Greyhawk, RPGA (Jacob, Matthew, and I, RPGA00034)
• 1-3pm - Work at Days of Wonder Booth

I just had to post this photoshop edit Bob sent over.

If fish could talk.

I'm not a big-time fisherman; you won't find me watching many fishing shows on TV and I rarely purchase my own fishing tackle.  The sport has always facinated me though, and I've probably fished a few times a year for most of my life.  Growing up it was mostly the hook-and-bobber sort, though once I got into high school and then college I started to learn the art of fishing with artificial lures; first with spinning gear and Rapala-style lures (thanks to my friend Bob), then fly fishing (thanks to my friend Mike who took me to Colorado for a summer).

At Keuka Lake the boys and I will often fish from the dock, usually catching panfish like bluegill, rock bass, perch, and largemouth bass.  Every so often we'll catch a nice fat catfish.

Jacob and Matthew this summer after they caught a nice rock bass (UPDATE as my fisherman friend Bob pointed out, that ain't no rock bass!  It is actually a smallmouth.  Believe me, though, we caught a ton of rock bass as well.  Big red eyes.  Seriously).  Did you know that a rock bass isn't really a bass, but is actually a sunfish?  I didn't till I searched for a good reference page on rock bass.  And did you know that if you search for rock bass, you are just as likely to link to Jon Entwistle?

After spending time on and off at Keuka Lake for the past 13 years, this summer I was bound and determined to catch some REAL fish in this lake.  I mean something like lake trout or salmon.  And apparently, Keuka Lake is known for its lake trout fishing.

After some investigation, we found a charter service that worked out of a marina just up the road from this.  My objective in taking a charter was the “teach a man to fish” mentality - learn the tackle, rigging, and techniques so that we could do this ourselves in the future.  So early one morning, Julie, Jacob, and I headed up the shore to start the charter at around 5am.

The lake was beautiful at this time - we were on the water before sunrise and the lighting was spectacular as the sun rose over the east hills.  We fished just off bluff point (the very middle of the lake where the Y-branch happens) on the eastern branch.  We were situated between the Switz restaurant and a big house on the bluff with columns; the water depth was about 110 feet.

Jacob starts to reel in a lunker lake trout.

The fishing approach was very straightforward - we used alewives (aka sawbellies) for bait on treble hooks, with about 12 inches of leader below a swivel.  Above the swivel was an egg-shaped sinker.  We ran 6 poles simultaneously off the bottom, with two having floats for the sole purpose of keeping the line away from the others.

We had a very productive morning - 1 good size smallmouth (which we released) and 5 lake trout.  The boys and I cooked up one of the trout that very evening, and I swear the meat was the color, texture, and flavor of a salmon.  Very tasty!  The three that we cooked up the following evening were the more typical white meat found with trout, but tasted fantastic nonetheless.

Our guide cleaning the trout after our fishing trip.  He kept the fish whole, and we cooked them in foil over a grill with butter, garlic, onions, mushrooms, and other seasonings.

Our next fishing adventure was to prove just as productive, if not nearly as enjoyable.  Jacob and I had been toying with the idea of an off-shore fishing trip from Depoe Bay, which is near our new beach home at Salishan.  Last weekend (July 31), we were cruising around Lincoln City looking for flooring for the house.  As a reward for getting dragged around for half the day, we stopped by the DQ on 101 for some lunch and ice cream.  We are standing in line waiting to order when a man walks up and says “aren't you Julie and Chris” or something to that effect.  I do a triple-take and realize it is Dr. Jerome Smith, father of one my earliest best friends Bob Smith (yes, the same guy I mentioned earlier that I fished with as a youth).  Turns out most of the Smith family is in Lincoln City for the weekend for the wedding of Bob's younger sister Debra.  Debra moved to Portland a few years ago, but Bob and his parents live in Indianapolis.  Bizarre coincidence...

Anyway, I talked Bob into joining me on a salmon fishing charter the next day.  Dockside Charters had room for two people, and on the Sunday morning we learned that the other pair had cancelled (small 4-person charter) so there was room for more.  I raced back to Salishan to pick up Jacob!  Boy, was he going to regret that a spot opened up...

We were able to get back to the dock around 6:15am for our departure.  Low tide was going to be at around 7:30am, and as treacherous as the bar is at Depoe Bay, the skipper was anxious to get out.  The Coast Guard was actively patrolling the inlet and disallowed any non-commercial boats from leaving the bay due to rough sees and shallow water at the bar.  What did this mean for us?  Once we got out on the ocean, we weren't coming back for 3 hours...

Bob reeling in a chinook salmon.  Does Jacob look happy?  No, Jacob does not look happy.

Here's the problem with the three of us going out on an ocean charter where we can't come back for three hours: we all got seasick.  I was fine for the first 90 minutes or so, and took great pity on Bob and Jacob.  Bob was at least functional enough at times to reel in fish; I probably caught about 4-5 wild salmon (which had to be released) plus my two limit hatchery coho salmon.  By 7:30am we were all in pretty bad shape; Jacob and I lost track of the number of times we each threw up (fortunately all over the side).  Jacob was so out of it that he doesn't even remember that I was seasick.

Jacob with a rather sizeable coho salmon.

Despite our misery, we managed to pull in our limit of two hatchery salmon each.  We had them cleaned once back on the dock, with a combination of filets and steaks providing enough salmon to last us for several months.

Bob holding up our largest coho.

So, it looks like Jacob and I probably won't be doing any more ocean fishing trips, at least on small boats.  Now we are actively searching for a good coastal river or bay guide service - only flat water!

I've had a few requests from family and friends for more pictures of the house in Salishan.  We were able to spend the weekend there again, doing some more work on the house, getting estimates on flooring, and having some fun.  Matthew and I played the golf course Saturday night, our first time playing there.  We took advantage of their twilight rates and raced around as fast as we could, getting in 11 holes in under 2 hours.  Sunday morning Jacob and I took the canoe out on Siletz Bay, taking advantage of the high tide to get a bit further towards the river.  The weather was fantastic - no wind and crystal-clear water.  We could see Dungeness crabs running sideways (how else would they run?) away from the canoe, harbor seals, and of course amazing shore and sea birds.

Another view of the deck. This portion has eastern exposure and overlooks the bay.