50 Games in 50 Weeks: Alhambra
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 […]
Rubber (movie review)
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 […]
The Eternity RPG – A Review
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. […]
My dream house
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 […]