Holy Flying Circus!
Back when Monty Python released their film Monty Python’s Life of Brian, the public reacted with shock. Based on the trailer, the film appeared to make fun of religion, and it seemed to make fun of Jesus. The former was true, and the latter not. But how to explain that to the public? The Pythons were asked to go on a talk show. That talk show episode became a milestone in the public appreciation of comedy and satire. You can watch […]
50 Games in 50 Weeks: Qwirkle Cubes
Qwirkle Cubes combines Scrabble with dice. The game comes with 90 six-sided dice. You draw a “hand” of six dice, which you roll immediately upon drawing. The first player places a set of dice in the middle of the game to form the “grid.” Play then proceeds in turns, with players adding dice to the grid, getting points for each die added of the same color in a row or column, and additional points for completing a row with […]
50 Games in 50 Weeks: Thurn and Taxis
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 […]
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. […]
50 Games in 50 Weeks: The Miskatonic School for Girls
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 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 […]
50 Games in 50 Weeks: Gamma World 4E
4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons‘s modularity makes it suitable for many genres: the modern era, Spelljammer, and even the gonzo mutant future of Gamma World. For those unfamiliar: Gamma World was a D&D post-apocalyptic setting that included grenade-throwing rabbit-men, sentient plants, and crumbling radioactive cities. It’s a wonderful, ridiculous potpourri of post-apocalyptic elements. Gamma World 4E updates this with D&D 4E’s mechanical approach. A lot of people dislike 4E’s mechanics […]