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Time to catch up on some session reports.  Two weekends ago, the boys and I broke out Pizza Box Football to play during the conference championship games (Tivo’d, of course).  We played a simulated playoff (Steelers vs. Broncos, Seahawks vs. Panthers) and Superbowl using the expansion rules and teams.

This is a great little game – one of the best football simulations I’ve played.  I’m not sure the expansion rules add much other than confusing extra cross-references, though the choices of more offensive plays (play action, screen, draw) and higher risk defenses (blitzes) are a nice touch.  Some may say simulation is too strong a word for this game as it doesn’t even try to simulate individual player actions.  What the game does simulate is the play-calling of football.

Yes, there’s a decent amount of luck in the game.  I was reminded of this repeatedly in my game with Matthew.

Yesterday the boys and I tried out scenario 2 of Doom: the Boardgame.  This game hasn’t seen very much action, partly because it is a bit longish and partly because it seems pretty hard for the heroes to win.  I’ve also been seriously thinking about trying to trade it for Descent, a game I think would come out more frequently.

It was rough going for the marines this time around; perhaps I was too hard on them but I just can’t hold back.  They made it to section 2 but were soon overwhelmed and I accumulated 6 frags to end the game.  It was a fun experience and I don’t want to sound too harsh on the game.

It has been almost a year since I posted anything about the chess program I run at Archer Glen elementary here in Sherwood.  We just kicked off tournament season and had a warm-up session last week during school with the two other Sherwood elementary schools at the local YMCA.  Chess is a big deal in Sherwood, largely through the efforts of Jack Weeks, retired school counselor who initiated the chess programs in the local schools.  It therefore seemed appropriate to award the Jack Weeks Challenge Cup to the school that wins the tournament each year.

I ran the tournament team swiss style and we managed to squeeze in seven rounds between 9am and 2am.  I was only able to attend until about 10:45am, but we had more than ample adult support on hand to keep things running smoothly.  Jacob and Matthew both had solid days, scoring in the 3–4.5 point range.  One of Jacob’s best games was a match against Hopkins Elementary’s best player – you can see the endgame below where they squared off with K/R and two pawns each.  Jacob got his rook lured into a trap in the back corner and lost it, leading to a loss in a well-spirited game.

Matthew did very well and finished in the top 3 for third graders.  This is his third year playing in the tournament circuit and should be a powerhouse by the time he hits the fifth grade.

Archer Glen pulled out the team victory as well as the top 2 individual players.  This coming Saturday is the big regional Chess for Success tournament.  If we can pull out a 1st or 2nd place at regionals then we’ll advance to the state championship.

Julie and I attended a SimplyFun party last Friday night at Eric’s house, with Mike Deans providing the consulting power.   I didn’t expect to see much new but I did want Julie to experience one of these parties (she missed mine).  Plus, well, it was an excuse to hang out with friends and play games.

We started out with a game of Handy.  I’m generally a big fan of dexterity games, but this one just doesn’t do it for me.  It is the type of game you play through a round and say “Oh, I get it.  Can we play something else now?”

While half the group played a game of Walk the Dogs (you can clearly see one the players employing the infamous poodle strategy)…

we gave the new(er) game Texas Roll’em a try.  This is a Richard Borg design and derivative of the classic Liar’s Dice (which is itself derived from Perudo).  The theme and bits are cool, but the game fell flat for me.  What’s different from the original?

• There’s more open information in the form of a “flop” of three dice that are use in conjunction with the rest of the hidden dice.  I suspect that the net effect of these additional dice is nill, but I’m not a statistician and I might be missing something.
• Anyone can call “bluff” (or “liar”) on a bet, not just the next player in sequence.  This isn’t a bad variant.
• After a bluff has been called, two more dice (the river I guess) are rolled and are added to the total.  This adds a level of randomness to the game that, in my opinion, takes away from the elegance of the original design.  Especially as the total number of dice decreases and these two become more impactful.

The final game of the night for us was the new Darryl Hannah design Liebrary.  This is a derivation from the classic parlor game “dictionary”, aka Balderdash.  The difference here is that players are given the title and author of a literary work (in one of several categories, including classics, kids, horror/sci-fi/fantasy, and a few others) and must come up with the first line of the work.  The judge player takes all the submissions and reads each one aloud along with the actual first line.  As expected, you get a point for guessing correctly and for each other player that chooses your fake answer.

I found the game to be more challenging than Balderdash as you need to try and mimic the voice of the author.  It won’t be right for everyone, but I enjoyed it enough to make it my only purchase of the evening.  The components for the game are very cool – the box looks like a giant book that folds out to reveal the card holders and the game board.

I showed Julie the game Ido tonight, recommending that she use it as a combination art literacy / gaming session at the school.  As we were fiddling with the pieces, admiring the cool abstract art aspect of the game, we decided to go ahead and give it a try.  Strike one game off my list!  Woot!

Ido is a an abstract game with very simple mechanics – start a new piece, move pieces on the board, or shift a black square frame one segment on the board.  The goal is to move four of your pieces off the diagonal edge of the board.

There are some surprises and challenges in the game – we were both a bit baffled at times about the impact shifting the frame would have on the shape of the board.  The game played quickly, about 15 minutes, but we both agreed it would be more interesting with 4 players.

I thought I’d share some nice photos taken last Sunday morning at the northern tip of Salishan spit.  This is where the harbor seals and sea lions like to congregate, and there were a bunch of them on Sunday.

Hereafter referred to as just “D&D”, Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 is the most recent version of the 30–years–and–running juggernaut roleplaying game from Wizards of the Coast.  This was really the game that started it all for me back in the late 70s when as a 6th grader I was given the Basic D&D (2nd ed) set and taught myself, ensnaring several close friends in the process.  From there we learned Advanced D&D (I still remember getting the Dungeon Masters Guide for Christmas, probably around 1980) and were cross-sold by our local game store into the multitude of Avalon Hill wargame titles.  I continued to play through high school and a wee bit in college, finding time to attend GenCon after my freshman year of college (and a summer spent as a cook and drug store clerk in Aspen).  I also played the original Star Wars RPG in college (Mr. Ladewig, are you listening?).

I introduced basic roleplaying to Jacob and Matthew at an early age, probably 8 (Jacob) / 6 (Matthew).  D&D and Star Wars RPG are probably the only games both boys will play any time, anywhere, with no hesitation.  They love the sense of adventure and make believe and the development aspect of their characters.  They approach the game very differently: Jacob devours the books, learning about new classes and special tricks he might employ with his character, while Matthew loves to just go along for the ride.  This isn’t just an age thing, as Jacob was reading the books when he was younger than Matthew.

Ken, Brandon, Jacob, Matthew, and I have had a Forgotten Realms campaign going on for what is probably close to two years now.  I’m the dungeon master and have assembled a series of one-shot adventures into a completely illogical amalgamation of events for the four characters, but we still have a good time.  Emphasis is on light story and heavy action, though I’m starting to sense that the boys are getting more interested in story and character development.

Given our busy schedules, we are lucky to get together once a month to play.  I suggested last December that we carve out a weekend to go out to the coast and play through a scenario in one marathon session.  We didn’t quite get the whole weekend, but last Saturday afternoon we drove out for about 24 hours of gaming, returning Sunday evening.  I don’t have the time to write my own adventures, so I was running an off-the-shelf adventure from Goodman Games called Shadows in Freeport.  I love the tag-line from their Dungeon Crawl Classics line of modules:

Remember the good old days, when adventures were underground, NPCs were there to be killed, and the finale of every dungeon was the dragon on the 20th level? Those days are back. Dungeon Crawl Classics don't waste your time with long-winded speeches, weird campaign settings, or NPCs who aren't meant to be killed. Each adventure is 100% good, solid dungeon crawl, with the monsters you know, the traps you fear, and the secret doors you know are there somewhere.

True to the brand, this adventure was a crawl in the classic sense – no negotiating with NPCs to determine motive and only a single puzzle to solve.  The rest of the adventure involved killing unread and various demons.

The theme of the adventure was a bit of a challenge for Matthew – the theme was a bit on the scary side for him what with the ghosts and spectres and 16 different flavors of demons.  He’s fine but definitely needed to sleep with me on Saturday night.

Most of the techniques I used to run the game I’ve learned from other DMs at RPGA sessions at conventions.  I use a square grid mat with wet erase markers (four colors) and a wide assortment of miniatures (yes, that is a Chewbacca wookie you see below).  I have miniatures from when I first played D&D, minis we’ve painted at conventions, and a wide range of D&D miniatures (plastic pre-painted) that I simply adore for running campaigns.  I’ve never played the D&D minis game but they sure work for roleplaying.

We have a pretty good handle on the rules but I play infrequently enough that I spend way too much time referring to manuals during sessions.  Fortunately Ken, Brandon, and Jacob are all at least as knowledgeable as I so provide much in-game help to resolve unknown issues.

The good news – everyone survived (there were some very challenging encounters for these guys!) and we now have a party of 9th and 10th level characters ready for their next challenge.  Ken is preparing to run The Shackled City in a new campaign, which will be a nice change.  We need to find the right transition to switch in to the new campaign with new 1st level characters.

While Ken and I prepared dinner Saturday night, the kids worked in a couple other games.  We keep a carom board out at the coast, and the boys played a simple flicking game similar to crokinole.

 They also played a three-way Magic game.

Hopefully this gives some insight into our D20 roleplaying life.  I’m not going to turn this into an RPG session blog, so don’t expect to see too much here unless I try out new systems or play at conventions.

When it comes to gaming conventions in Portland, there’s really only one game in town and that’s GameStorm.  We’ll be running a number of events this year, including a 2–player tournament, a Havoc tournament, our traditional Sunday morning family gaming session, and a Sunriver Games prototype session.  Mark your calendar: March 24–26 at the Red Lion at the Quay in Vancouver, WA.

They are also holding a free game day this Saturday in Portland.  KC and I plan to be there to try out a prototype or two.

I made it to Mike’s “South Tuesday” game night tonight, a good step towards meeting my New Years resolution.  We had a great crowd of 9 tonight and decide to split into 5 / 4, and we would remain in those groups for the evening.

Doug, Chuck, KC, and Rita started things off with Tal der Könige, a game I enjoyed very much when I played at the coast about 10 days ago.  Don’t know much about how this play went but it did look like everyone had fun.  The game lasted about 90 minutes.

Mike declared tonight a “classics” night and suggested the Splotter game Bus along with a few others.  There was a bit of debate about whether or not Bus qualifies as a classic, but I was certainly eager to play it again face-to-face.  I’ve played it 2 or 3 times live before, and about 10 times on Spiel-by-Web.  Only Mike had played before, so the first 15 minutes involved explaining the game to Carey, Tim, and Eric.

The game is a brain burner and it is very easy to make (often crippling) mistakes.  There are so few opportunities to score points in a five player game due to congestion and player chaos that a missed chance or misplayed can easily take a player out of contention.  This makes it fairly unforgiving for new players.  Carey chose the vroom action a couple of times when it turned out he could transport no passengers, probably because he didn’t anticipate some of the other players’ actions.  This is a very common mistake that I still make, though I’m more likely to make suboptimal choices and not think a turn ahead.

The game was very tight, with Mike burning his last cube thinking it was the last turn (there was going to be one more turn) and possibly missing a chance to be in contention.  As it was, Eric and Tim tied for points (2 ahead of Mike, Carey and me, though Mike may have been ahead of us) but Eric winning on the tie-breaker as he had “earned” a stone by stopping time.  A fun game that I’d like to see out more.

While we were finishing up Bus, the other crowd played some David and Goliath.

My last game of the night was 6 Nimmt, my favorite filler game of late. We had an interesting discussion about favorite filler card games, with titles such as Coloretto, Geschenkt, and 6 Nimmt getting mentioned.  Coloretto wore out its welcome with me, and I’m not sure why.  Maybe 6 Nimmt will do the same, but for now I quite enjoy it for what it is – a quick game with decisions to make but nothing too angst-ridden.  I’m sure there are solid strategies to the game, but I use a few basic rules that keep decisions simple and I seem to win about half the time I play.  Maybe I just get good cards.

During 6 Nimmt the other group was playing (what else?)… Havoc!

Saturday and Sunday should involve some RPG goodness out at the beach – I’ll post some details about the campaign I’m running and chat a bit about how to play D&D with pre-teens.

I recently made a commitment that I would post more about the role-playing game sessions I run.  These don’t happen frequently, but they are an important part of my family’s gaming world so it does make sense to talk about it from time to time.

Sunday was a mostly open day, and I offered two choices to the boys – finish our saved game of Attack! or do a short session of Star Wars D20.  They immediately opted for some role-playing action, which put me in a bind as I had no planned adventure for their characters (a rogue and a Jedi).  Jacob was kind enough to do some research on the WOTC site and found a short one-shot adventure for us to play.

We used to play the old West End D6 Star Wars RPG (I played this in college and had all the materials) but switched to D20 once we became familiar with D&D 3.0.  It really is easier on the kids sticking to a single system like D20, though don’t think for a second that I’m not eager to try some other systems.  I already have Thirty and Cat in the queue to try and am also very interested in Polaris.

This adventure turned out to be very short, almost too short, but was a nice way to get back into Star Wars and hopefully will lead to some more play in the near future.  I’ve got a big RPG session planned for next weekend so expect to see some more on our D&D campaign next Sunday or Monday.

We drove over to the Rude’s home around 3pm – I offered to help Ken setup his new computer and the boys sat down with Brandon to play with his new XBox 360.  Ken and I managed to squeeze in a quick 2–player game of Attika.

There were few to no opportunities to connect our temples, so it became very clear about mid-game that the first player to build out his building set was going to win.  Attika is mostly about turn and resource efficiency and might be just a bit too dependent on luck of the tile draw, but I enjoy it nonetheless.  I managed to jump on two map tiles Ken laid out by using several amphoras as once, consuming the best resource spots and effectively blocking him out of his freshly placed terrain.  This gave me plenty of room to breath and allowed me to finish about 3–4 buildings ahead of him.

While waiting for dinner, the boys and I played a three-player favorite of mine, Wyatt Earp.  Both boys managed to catch me off-guard in consecutive games, going out about 2 turns before I expected and snatching way too many points.

Final score was Matthew: $15, Jacob: $14, and Chris: $13.  We played two hands.

Monday is a day of cleaning up, packing, and heading home.  That doesn’t mean we can’t fit in a few games.

I woke up fairly early to watch the Iowa / Florida game.  By halftime there wasn’t much to see, so I moved back to the table to do my day 3 post and watched Ken, KC, and Rita play the Terrain Game.  This game doesn’t have the highest rating on BGG, but apparently KC has a variant that made the game a bit more playable.  He promises to make a post soon on the ‘geek with some more details.

KC recently designed a kid’s game based on the annoying but addictive flash animation Badger Badger Badger.  It is a press-your-luck tile drawing game that the younger kids seemed to like quite a bit, especially Matthew.

KC and I also played a nice little prototype of Kevin Nunn’s Counter Spy game.  This is the best two-player game prototype we’ve had and will very likely go into another round of play-testing with our local group.  It has a CCG feel without the deck building aspect – lots of take-that and hand management.  I’ve played four times so far and each game has been close with plenty of tension.

The final game played here for New Year’s 2006 is of course Magic: the Gathering.  The kids continue to enjoy their cards from Ravnica and we look forward to some trading from our sealed deck acquisitions to tune our decks a bit more.

Overall the weekend was a fantastic success – we saw much more gaming participation from traditional non-gamers this weekend, a specific goal that KC and I had.  The hit party game of the weekend was a tie between Catch Phrase and Plext.  My favorite gamer-games of the weekend were Atlantic Star and Byzantium.