I resolved at the beginning of this month to try something new for the next 3 months:

• I will read twice as many books as movies I watch.
• I will spend at most 30 free minutes on the computer each weekday evening. This time includes email, social networks, YouTube, and general surfing, but not time spent writing or otherwise making things.
• I will spend at most 90 free minutes on the computer each weekend day.
• I will make something every week, and I will publish something every month.

I might not complete the weekly thing by the end of the week, but I should have at least a solid draft. The thing may be a dice game, a short story, a gardening video, or anything else that takes creative effort.

Last week, with the death of stop motion animator Ray Harryhausen, I read tributes in which people promised to re-watch a Ray Harryhausen movie. I was struck that Harryhausen (and his estate) probably profited nothing from this. I doubt he received any royalties from the movies he worked on. So I thought: what would Ray want us to do?

I think he’d want us to make some stop motion ourselves.

So I grabbed a Gundam model kit and made this:

I learned a few things:

1. With a basic understanding of lighting and camera position, you can create something very quickly. My camcorder has a photo mode, so I used that to record each frame of the animation. Once I set everything up, the actual animation took maybe 10 minutes.
2. Tape down your model.
3. Gundam model kits are perfect for stop motion. They have a wide range of limb motion and stay where you put them.

Thurn And Taxis board game components

Thurn and Taxis is a Euro board game that’s somewhat like Ticket to Ride. In addition to building routes, players also explicitly dominate regions.

Your options are determined through a deck of cards, each representing a region on the board. Each turn, you can play a card to add a route in the region specified on the card. As your routes grow, you can score them, and as your routes connect cities, you can score them, as well.

One interesting strategic concern lies in timing which routes you score. You can score them early (thus locking them in) or wait and try for a higher score.

Moreover, Thurn and Taxis contains many different ways to score and win the game. This dramatically increases your strategic options, and helps to make the game a little less directly competitive.

Indeed, players of Thurn and Taxis compete less directly than they do in, say, Ticket to Ride. For example, one player can’t block another player’s route. However, you score more points if you claim a region first, so the game becomes more of a race than a fight.

Because the board contains a small number of cities, the game ends pretty quickly. Time-strapped players, take note: a game of Thurn and Taxis takes about one hour.

Overall, I found this to be a deeply strategic yet easy to learn (and set up!) game.

Alhambra is a territory purchase game: you collect cards representing different kinds of money, then use that money to buy square pieces of a garden. You get points based on how many pieces of your garden you can fit together (each piece has some walled borders, and you must join sections appropriately), and the types of garden pieces you have.

Alhambra‘s a wonderfully consistent game: just as interesting early in the game as it is near the end. You have to pay attention during others’ turns as they collect money cards and buy garden pieces, since 4 garden pieces are available to buy at any given time. You must plan your turn effectively. Moreover, the ongoing score is an effective but imperfect predictor of success.

It’s easy to grasp, because there are so few parts to the game. Kids could play it, though they’ll likely get blown away by adult players. Adults will find depth to the game’s strategies, without too many options at any given time.

This probably all old news to most of my geek viewers, thanks to the Tabletop episode on Alhambra. If you want to see the game in action, here you go:

Rubber movie poster

Rubber evokes the mood of a Coen Brothers film: a killer, out for revenge, drifts into a small town. Who will survive? Can anybody stop him?

The film perfectly captures the tone of this genre. There’s just one twist. No, there are two: one is the film’s aggressively postmodern approach. The second is the killer’s specific form. It’s a rubber car tire.

Literally, a tire rolls into town on its own power, wanders around, and kills people with a Scanners-style telepathic blast.

This is just strange enough to pique the viewer’s interest. How will the tire react when a kid realizes that the tire is the killer? Can it be killed?

And then there’s the film’s postmodernism. However postmodern you can imagine a film being, this film is more postmodern than that. The plot piles multiple layers of commentary about film on top of each other (there’s an audience in the film), plus there’s the raw meta-commentary of using a rubber tire as your film’s main character.

One’s appreciation of the film will depend on one’s suspension of disbelief (about the tire) and one’s appreciation of meta-commentary. If the postmodernism of Community leaves you breathless with laughter, you’ll get Rubber.

If nothing else, it’s a taut little film that has a lot going on.

One of the most fun experiences in my life is running a game I designed.

The game’s never perfect. Players almost always suggest changes. And they almost always have fun.

I’m going to describe what it was like to run Dungeon Raiders, which is my simplification of original D&D, during last year’s DC Game Day.

I ran “Temple of the Ghoul,” a free old-school adventure I’ve run several times. I love it. It’s a mostly linear environment: one entrance, a few upper-level temple rooms, and a small complex of rooms underground. The heroes have choices, but not many.

The system ran beautifully. Most of my players played early editions of D&D, so they became comfortable very quickly. Each class uses its own die for attacks, and you’re always trying to meet or beat 4. Nobody asked any rules questions after the first 15 minutes.

Like most retroclones, Dungeon Raiders makes combat so simple that players tend to exercise their creativity. When every round of combat looks the same–one die roll and one hit–players chafe and start to move their characters around the room, asking about the environment and tactics.

Unfortunately, I made one mistake: near the end of the game, while surrounded by zombies, the cleric gleefully cast Turn Undead. There’s no such automatic spell in Dungeon Raiders, and I told him with regret that his cleric couldn’t do that. He humbly accepted this and we moved on, but I realized that I had no reason to deny him. It wasn’t about to break the system, and this was a one-shot tournament game anyway.

Nevertheless, we built to a climactic slowdown with the titular Ghoul, and the players destroyed him surprisingly quickly and claimed a room full of gold.

Dungeon Raiders is completely free and available in PDF, mobi, and epub.

’7 Lucky Gods of japan’ by japan-life on Flickr

A couple weeks ago, I played a game of the upcoming role-playing game Eternity with its designer, Mark Diaz Truman. Even though game is still in beta, the rules work well, and we had a great time.

It’s a game of gods and their chosen people. Each player starts by defining a god’s name and sphere of influence. Then players starts defining specific aspects of the god, and here’s where things start to get really interesting.

One player defines one element of his or her god, such as a priest, a child of the god, or the god’s home realm. Then, each other player offers additional facts or complications to that element (“The priest was initially an initiate of another god’s order,” “The child is beginning to chafe under your direction,” “Your realm is under attack”). One can always decline these, but players bid special points that are in short supply, so there’s strong incentive to accept a deep complication.

There are several rounds of this, and once everyone’s done, everyone should understand each god’s influence, realm, and archons. Indeed, usually each god looks over several chosen individuals by this point.

Then you start role-playing.

The players do not role-play the gods; they role-play the gods’ archons and devotees. All of those characters defined in the earlier phase become fodder for conflict, so you play out confrontations between those characters, as they seek solutions to their problems. And if nothing else, one god can always send an archon on a quest into another god’s realm.

The rules help players build powerful yet flawed characters. That’s the beauty of the system: conflict and tragedy flow naturally from the players’ choices.

Because this occurs between characters who already wield supernatural power, the settings and stakes can be wild. We had one scene set in a miles-high M.C. Escher castle, where a godling faced the ghost of Cortez on a chessboard, surrounded by attacking playing cards from Alice in Wonderland.

Every session must come to an end. And that’s where things get even more interesting: according to the rules, every session begins 50 years after the previous one. All your archons and chosen ones age and die as the game progresses.

I’m deeply impressed with Eternity. I hope you get a chance to play.

‘Victorian House’ by roarofthefour on Flickr

Last night, I dreamt of my house.

When I dream, I frequently find myself living in this particular house. It’s a two-story Victorian with pale yellow siding.

I live on the first floor, with its living room and kitchen and bedrooms in the back, and I barely ever think of the second floor. In the dream, I need something or want something on the second floor, or I have to escape from something horrible downstairs, so I go up.

The upstairs is lovely: large rooms, nicely furnished with couches and chairs. It’s messy, but that’s okay. I search through a sitting room, a side bedroom I’ve converted into storage, and I think a few other rooms.

I never find what I’m looking for.

The Dresden Files RPG is the game built around the Dresden Files urban fantasy world, using the FATE system.

I had an unusual experience running Dresden Files. During PAX East 2012, some friends wanted to try the system. I borrowed a copy of the rules from a booth selling Evil Hat merchandise (thanks, guys!), and we grabbed a table in the cafeteria section of the conference center. As the players built their characters, we started brainstorming about the city we’d play in. The choice was obvious: Boston, the city in which we sat. We came up with lots of great ideas about Boston as a center of magical stories, and then….

I improvised.

I’ve dreamed up plots “on the fly” before, but I’d always built at least a few antagonists and ideas beforehand. This time, I had to invent a plot hook and involve the characters from the first minute.

And it was magical. Pun intended.

I created an incident in the basement of the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, something really nasty involving a lot of blood. The characters were pulled in and quickly began investigating.

The system should support stories that fit its world, and Dresden does so wonderfully. Your character’s Aspects define that character’s personality and powers, while skills define standard real-world abilities. You roll against those to determine how well you do something, and can invoke an Aspect for a boost.

There’s a lot more to the system, but that summary illustrates one nice element of Dresden Files: if you know nothing else about the system, you can just roll against your skills. That’s how we familiarized ourselves with the system.

I’m glad I grabbed the physical book. The book’s large amount of material makes it difficult to jump around, at least in PDF form. It’s easier to bookmark and flip through the physical book to look up a spell’s effects, sample NPC stats, etc.

Homemade Cough Syrup

This is the cough syrup of good intentions.

I like making homemade things. Since I’ve been fighting some kind of super-illness for the past few weeks, I researched a few recipes for homemade cough syrup.

There are two main varieties: one based on apple cider vinegar, and another based on honey. It should be no surprise that I tried the latter option.

This cough syrup is simple: 1/4 cup honey and 1/4 cup olive oil, plus about 1 tablespoon of lemon juice. The first two certain soothe the throat, while the ubiquity of citrus in cold remedies gives it a vote in my book.

I combined the honey and olive oil in a small pot on the stove over medium-low heat (about 25%), and cooked until it started to simmer. I then stirred in the lemon juice, waited for it to cool, and poured it into a mason jar.

The result? It’s moderately effective. When I take about a tablespoon, I can feel it coat my throat, and my symptoms ease. However, I still cough a bit, and it doesn’t last long.

I’m a bit disappointed, though perhaps I’m expecting too much. I want to try a vinegar-based syrup next, but for now, I have cough syrup with no weird chemicals or side effects. Success!

This is a game about schoolgirls driven slowly crazy by horrible monsters, yet it’s quirky and fun. If you can’t imagine how that might be, this is the wrong game for you.

Miskatonic School for Girls artwork

Miskatonic School for Girls is a card game in which you build a deck of schoolgirls and school paraphernalia, face monstrous teachers, and try to drive other players’ girls crazy while protecting your own from paddling and daily exposure to Teachers From Beyond.

It uses deck-building, similar to Dominion. However, you can also draw monstrous teachers and use them to attack other players’ girls. Other players are attacking your girls, too, and you use your girls to fend off the monsters, with school paraphernalia (diaries, candy, etc.) to improve the girls’ scores.

If a girl succumbs to a monster, she gets paddled, which decreases her sanity. Once all your girls lose sanity, you’re out of the game, so the last player with even marginally sane schoolgirls wins.

The lush, full-color artwork keeps the game light in tone. This premise could induce shudders in many gamers, and thankfully both the artwork and concept avoid any sexual or depressing themes. For example, the image used when a girl loses all her sanity is simply a girl with crossed eyes and a goofy grin. The art maintains a comic strip tone, where the monsters are those under Calvin’s bed instead of the ones in a Japanese hentai movie.

Games run quickly, 45–60 minutes once you’re used to the mechanics. The decks contain just enough variety in cards that you must constantly adjust your strategy throughout the game. While I’ve only played it twice, Miskatonic doesn’t feel like it has very deep strategic possibilities. This is a game to pull out every few months and enjoy for a round or two.