The Art of Board Game Storage

Lifehacker put me on to this: craft blog Infarrantly Creative came up with a novel game solution. Use it as wall art. The post walks you through the steps of designing and constructing frames to not only enclose the board, but create a space behind the board to store bits. It’s more than kind of phenomenally clever.

The only drawback I can think of is it kills the game’s portability. If you’re the usual host, that’s no problem. Otherwise, it can put a crimp in heading out to game night or the local convention. You could always subscribe to the action figure collector’s mantra of “one to show, one to go,” which would make game publishers inordinately happy, I’m sure.

The article focuses on games for children or the family; the example projects framed the boards from Candyland, Chutes and Ladders and Cranium. Still, boards for games like Ticket to Ride or Arkham Horror would make for some phenomenal game room art. You might need to make the hollow space behind the board a bit deeper to hold the inevitable Plano boxes, but that’s fine, right?

[Tuesday Night Board Games] Iron Dragon

Nonny (lower right) rakes it in playing Iron Dragon.

Munk picked up a new copy of an old title this week. The stickers were fresh on the goods tokens for Iron Dragon, a railroad building game with the whole megillah of fantasy themed elements: elves, dwarves, dragons, potions and wands. Each player slowly builds a rail system across — and potentially under — the continent, delivering goods to generate more cash, with which to extend their rail system and so until someone has connected seven of the world’s eight major cities and accumulated $250 gold pieces, whimsically expressed in the form of bank notes backed by the wizards guild. We joked more than a bit about just how the wizards guaranteed the currency: “So this bill is worth one tenth of a wizard?” We also talked about not playing the game the whole night, as the game plays out over four hours according to the box, but that didn’t quite pan out.

I first encountered Iron Dragon long, long ago in the early days of Quarterstaff Games’ renaissance. It was one of a motley assortment of games for playing in the store’s then-cramped back room. I don’t know if it had ever been played, though. I remember opening it once and, in addition to being put off by the dizzying array of mileposts and geometrical graphic design, that the crayons were still sharp and fresh, much as those that came with Munk’s copy of the game.

Northeast Wars Canceled

http://www.flickr.com/photos/northeastwars/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Sad news came over the RSS feed today: Burlington’s local game convention, Northeast Wars, has been canceled for 2010. The post cites “a series of unfortunate circumstances” that prompted the convention’s organizers, the management of local business Quarterstaff Games, to cancel the event rather than put on one that was “sub-par.”

Northeast Wars originally ran for seven years in the 1990s and enjoyed a rebirth in 2008 and 2009. Interested parties are advised to keep an eye on the convention’s website in case Northeast Wars makes a second resurgence in 2011.

It’s Not Easy Being an Overlord

Andrea, Houser and Alex (left to right) engage in butt-kicking for goodness without breaking a sweat in Descent: Journeys in the Dark.

This past weekend, some folks got together for a game of Descent: Journeys in the Dark, which has, bizarrely, turned out to be a near unanimous hit for the regular gaming group. I say “bizarrely” because, well, it appeals even to our hardcore Eurogamer girl. I think it’s thanks to all the resource management, conversion functions and need to maximize efficiency against time.

Descent and I have reached a funny sort of relationship. I’ve played it enough to recognize that the base game’s dungeons and equipment largely gear it for the heroes to walk all over the overlord. My limited experience with the dungeons from later expansions, namely The Well of Darkness, suggests they’re as unkind to the players as the base game is to the overlord.

That said, at this point in the group’s Descent playing experience, it seems best to go into the role of overlord accepting the heroes are going to prod serious buttock. Four players working together, planning their moves, can coordinate on a level that allows them to open the door to a new area and, unless it’s seriously stocked and designed to work against them, reliably clear 80 to 90% of the monsters therein. (Although, in retrospect, this may be what the Gust of Wind event is for: to make the further reaches of a new space more difficult for the heroes to affect at range.)

[Casting Call] This Man

A book from the library at Dilmun.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/helenaliu/
CC BY-ND 2.0

As the time draws closer to the next great Reckoning, more and more people across the world wake with vivid memories of long, involved conversations with a man whom they instinctively think of as “This Man.” Who he is and what they spoke about remains unclear to those who dream of him. They only remember his lack of a name and the urgency with which he spoke.

This Man’s tale, say those who know it, began long ago and in another country, in Hod, the dream kingdom of Morpheus. Then and there, he served Rex Oneiros in his White Tower in the city of Dilmun. He rose in influence and estimation, coming closer to family and confidante to Morpheus than the dream lord allowed ever before. One day, however, something happened; This Man committed some terrible sin in the eyes of his liege. No two tellers of the story agree on how or what. The eighty-seventh oracle at Delphi said he betrayed Morpheus for the love of a garden nymph. The carvings of Machu Picchu relate how This Man loaned a forbidden book from the library of unwritten works. Or maybe he told Morpheus what he really thought, as Mad Hetty insists.

Who’s Afraid of Ragland Park?

An article posted by Phantoms and Monsters, in which a candidate for the Romanian presidency claims a “negative energy” attack caused him to lose the election, reminded me of a plot seed I once threw out on RPG.net, in the days when I thought IRC would be an acceptable substitute for face-to-face role playing:

Well, my most recent campaign idea for Werewolf involves Ragland Park, a charismatic Glass Walker philodox, resolving to become the United States of America’s first Garou president. The PCs would be his team of hatchetmen, doing all the things hatchetmen do: digging up dirt on opponents, conducting midnight raids on campaign headquarters, exterminating the Banes someone let loose in a state’s voting machines, etc.

Somewhat silly, but fun, I would hope.

I have yet to run or really even think about Who’s Afraid of Ragland Park?, as I dubbed it, but it sidles forth from the back of my mind now and then. Part of the challenge would be working around and playing with the expectation that werewolves and other were-creatures have difficulty fitting into modern life. Even in WitchCraft, many Ferals live on the outskirts of society because of their more animal drives. It doesn’t make the idea impossible, just unlikely, which is great when the PCs are meant to be exceptional people doing extraordinary things.

The bit about the incumbent candidate having a parapsychologist attached to the campaign has given me some glorious ideas about the secret wars of symbols and mysticism that drive the public faces of political campaigns.

The Michelle Chronicles

We celebrate Actual Play Friday this week with a link for the ages.

The other day on Twitter, Chad Underkoffler, AKA @CUnderkoffler, tweeted the link to something I’ve tried to find now and again for years, but couldn’t come up with the magic words to appease Google: actual play anecdotes about a most singular Vampire: The Masquerade player named Michelle. Her Tremere vampire flies around in the daytime, slings Lure of Flames like no one’s business and generally acts like a senseless loon intended to cause the GM as much grief as possible.

Which, really, is the whole point of the story. I give you The Michelle Chronicles.

The Serpent of Memphremagog

If Champ isn’t enough Vermont cryptid for you, Cryptozoology Online recently posted a rundown on one of Vermont’s other lake serpents, dwelling in Lake Memphremagog¹ between Newport, Vermont and Magog, Quebec.

For your monster hunting needs, the post comes equipped with some folklore verse for your players to uncover, a timeline of sightings of the serpent from 1816 forward and even more resources to tap, including Memphreusa.com, a site dedicated to the creature.

¹ Not sure how to pronounce Memphremagog? Try “memf-ruh-may-gog.”

[RPG Blog Carnival] How Far Will You Travel to Game?

This month's theme is travel and games and travel in games.

How far will you travel to play a game? The answer has varied for me over the years. I have, on occasion, found myself on the road alone or carpooling for two hours for a roleplaying session. That was back in the days of an exceptionally engaging Stargate: SG-4 campaign that wandered from St. Johnsbury to Johnson to Montpelier as needed. It was a phenomenally fun game, but ultimately the travel involved put me off staying enaged. Add an hour or two of travel to an evening game that may break up late, and then go to your early morning job a couple times and it’ll take the shine off any recreational activity.

That has since become my rule of thumb for gamers in general. People will travel an hour or two infrequently, but even the energetic ones willing to sign on the long haul often find themselves wanting or having to bow out. It may have something to do with the geography of Vermont and northern New England. Vermont’s a fairly small state, but it can take a bloody long time to get anywhere because we’ve only got two interstates, both running north-south, and a plethora of state and local roads in a wide range of states of decrepitude. Add to that the rough and winding ways so many people live on and it’s no surprise everybody’s so eager to host the weekly game.

Conventions, on the other hand, tend to act like gravity wells. The bigger they are, the greater the draw. TotalCon, based in central-eastish Massachusetts, can draw people all the way down from Burlington; I knew one fellow who, with his regular gaming group, used TotalCon as their annual road trip. The reverse, however, doesn’t hold. I would be greatly surprised to see a high volume from southern New England come as far north as Burlington, even if the Burlington convention scene somehow contrived to rival the scale of a TotalCon or Unity Games. Regardless of scale or quality of offerings, Burlington’s just out the way, tucked in the northwesternmost corner of New England, with a big old lake to the west preventing easy access from that direction and a single high speed corridor connecting the valley to the more populous regions of the southeast.

Similarly, I’ve heard tales on podcasts like Role Playing Public Radio and All Games Considered of eight and ten hour road trips from across the midwest to attend Gen Con in Indianapolis. One of the perks of being the mother of all conventions is all the Mohammeds very cheerfully come to you. Eight hours from Burlington would put one somewhere in Pennsylvania or New Jersey, which works for the World Boardgaming Championships in Lancaster. But then you find yourself up against that New Englander tendency to avoid travel again.

Recorded in the Annals of Geekery

Since the middle of 2007, I’ve been using Boardgamegeek’s play logging function to track what board games I’ve played. At the time, I began doing so because I’d been dropping in on a friend’s regular game night. The titles they played were, to me at the time, outré enough that I wanted a record of what I had and hadn’t played. So the first games I logged were titles like Power Grid and Caylus. Some plays prior to that summer I was able to backdate because I knew I played them on particular days of a given convention.

A couple months ago, Boardgamegeek’s alternate identity, Geekdo, opened a roleplaying game oriented section. While my roleplaying’s been less frequent in the past year than I would have liked, I’m using the play log on the RPG side as well for the dry facts when the opportunity. Held Action remains the go-to place for actual play reports, natch.

Lately, I’ve been trying to think of a way to incorporate that play log data into this blog in an obvious way. Geekdo has a widget to embed in a web page to display one’s recent plays, among other possibilities, but the styling leaves something to be desired. Furthermore, WordPress.com doesn’t allow scripts in their widgets. It would be really neat if one could design an RSS feed of the recent play information. That could be more readily embedded in a blog or a social network profile.

For the moment, though, I’ve added a section to the About page that links to the grand summation of board and roleplaying games I’ve logged playing over the past couple years. With time and the jogging of memories, I hope to round out the roleplaying side a bit more. I can remember for sure the last couple Call of Cthulhu games I played, with the inestimable John Terra as Keeper.