tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-86030700202312533032024-02-18T22:01:08.671-05:00Starting YoungAbout gaming and geekdom and raising the next generation...Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger28125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8603070020231253303.post-41688916362949283252015-09-02T14:21:00.001-04:002015-09-02T14:21:44.613-04:00GenCon with Geeklets, Part 3 (Big Kids)
<p> This is part 3 in a series of posts about navigating GenCon with geek kids. Part 1 (General Advice) is <a href="http://geekthis.blogspot.com/2015/08/gencon-with-geeklets-part-1-general.html" target="_self" title="">here</a>. Part 2 (infants and toddlers) is <a href="http://geekthis.blogspot.com/2015/09/gencon-with-geeklets-part-2-infants-and.html" target="_self" title="">here</a>.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/leatherjen/20471127313/" target="_blank" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img src="https://farm1.staticflickr.com/688/20471127313_a5293abf3e.jpg" id="blogsy-1441218102768.0874" class="aligncenter" alt="" width="225" height="300"></a></div>
<p style="text-align: center;"><strong>Big Kid Badges:</strong></p>
<p>Two years ago Girl Scouts of Central Indiana were still hosting events at GenCon, and registration came with a 4-day badge, so Cups was upgraded for cheap. Last year and this year there were no Girl Scout events, so we had to decide whether to spring for a badge for her or not. Kids over 8 must have a badge per GenCon policy. Cups (age 8) did enough this year that we got a badge's worth of entertainment out of her. Your child's mileage may vary. </p>
<p>Without a full badge, kids aren't supposed to be able to participate in non-KID tagged events, so if your Big Kid is planning to play Big Games you'll want to consider it. However, there is no discount so you're looking at $80 for a 4-day badge or $45 for a single day on preregistration. If you want to just try it out, then I'd recommend a Family Fun Day package, which is $35 total for up to 4 single-day Sunday badges. This is also a good option for groups who aren't wanting to commit to the full GenCon experience. That said, not everyone is a stickler on official badges for kids -- but the registration system is, so somebody needs a badge to preregister for events and I'd recommend playing it by the rules.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><strong>Entertainment:</strong></p>
<p>Games for kids are easier to find than games for littles; I find that gamer kids tend to function a category higher than what's printed on the box. Demos are really important here, in order to get a handle on whether the rules complexity is right for your kid or not, and in the 6-8 range your kid is generally old enough to sit for demos themselves. Encourage your Big Kid to interact with dealers, ask questions, and assess the games they're playing. Set some ground rules before you go into the dealer's hall or demo rooms -- some games may be in the demo/beta stage (and you can't fund everything that looks cool on Kickstarter) while others may fall into the "we can't buy every game in the con" rule. Our kids work on a budget system (it's educational and entertaining to watch them try to math) but whatever works for your family, just set expectations in advance </p>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cups pitches a new Skylander</td></tr>
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<p>Depending on your Big Kid's interests (we have a comic book nerd), you may find some things to their liking in Artists' Alley as well. If your Big Kid has a particular comic or collection they enjoy, it's worth checking to see if someone related to that is going to be exhibiting. There's one important thing to know about Artists' Alley: unlike the rest of the vendor hall, it works on a centralized cash register system. If you are making a purchase from one of the artists exhibiting, you'll get a billing slip from them that you take to the central kiosk. You wait in line there to pay your total, then take the stamped slip back to the artist and get your goods. Sometimes the lines are long, so keep this in mind and if you're moving fast or very tired you may want to plan to come back later.</p>
<p>Keep in mind that Artists' Alley hosts all kinds of art, so you may find yourself needing to explain some of the finer points of anatomy to your Big Kid (in our case, it was why someone had put sticker pasties on the display). Come prepared. In fact, you should probably come prepared to deal with questions and commentary in general if you are bringing your Big Kid to a con; cosplayers are a diverse lot. Also bear in mind that anything you say may very well be repeated to a complete stranger at full volume ("My mom says I'm not old enough to wear just underpants in public"), so practice your good manners.</p>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pathfinder Kids Track</td></tr>
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<p>Pathfinder hosts a Kids Track event with both beginner (no experience needed) and advanced (some previous Pathfinder experience) tracks, and kids who participate will get a set of dice and some other freebies, as well as taking part in a Real Pathfinder adventure. Kids who complete four games will get some Pathfinder swag, and a boon that carries over in case of joining the Pathfinder Society in the future. It's a good time, and the GM's are excellent. You'll want to plan on being in the room but not over your Big Kid's shoulders; well-meaning gaming parents can ruin everyone's fun. Games are scheduled with a muster about 5 minutes before the scheduled time; ticketed kids get priority but we had no trouble getting in on generics alone. They're supposed to run about 90 minutes-2 hours but as with any gaming session the dice may make this time longer or shorter.</p>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pokemon XY Pre-Release Event</td></tr>
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<p>Pokemon and My Little Pony TCG's run demos and tournaments which can range from free to very pricey but may come with cool swag like promo cards or pre-release decks, if your Big Kid is a collector. Magic: the Gathering takes up half a hall and runs events throughout the con. You'll want to brush up on the different types of tournaments if you aren't a player in order to gauge what your Big Kid is ready for and how much time you should expect to spend. Be aware that some games will simply wait for enough players to show up, resulting in a lot of wasted time (we waited an hour for a tournament to start -- after 30 minutes we were given the option to "come back later" and hope that enough folks were there) and bored kids, while others will give a "bye" in order to start playing sooner. You'll have to ask what a particular group's policy is on a case basis.</p>
<p>GenCon has started doing a button collection event that your Big Kid may find interesting: scattered throughout the convention center are nine stations where GenCon volunteers distribute souvenir buttons to kids. The Family Fun Guide has a description of all the buttons and a map showing where to find them. Buttons are restricted to children for part of the day and they have a lot, but we've seen them run out on Sundays as families flood the convention (cheap tickets are the way to go), so if your Big Kid enjoys buttons grab a map and start hunting.</p>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cardhalla!</td></tr>
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<p> Cardhalla may be another location to entertain your Big Kid. It's usually located near the Georgia Street exit; just look for the towers of cards. Essentially, instead of tossing extra common cards out, gamers will bring them and donate to a massive community card-house-building effort. Anyone is welcome to help with the building, so your Big Kid can test out their skills on a little tower or polish them on a big one.</p>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Amazing Feats!</td></tr>
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<p> This year we picked up tickets to Acrobatica Infiniti, whom I can only hope will return in future years. This one-hour cirque is a family-friendly (but still geek targeted) event with amazing performers doing Feats of Incredible Skill. Be prepared for some risque comments and references your Big Kid may not get (at least ours has not yet read Game of Thrones), but the show itself was well worth attending.</p>
<p> <span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); line-height: 1.3em;">It's worth a shoutout here to the SPA activities -- SPA stands for Spouse Activities, which stands for an eclectic collection of tours, crafting, and creativity -- and also to the Writer's Symposium, which does host some kid-targeted writing workshops which were really fun. </span><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">We're fairly new to the Big Kid - GenCon territory, but Cups was really thrilled to be able to schedule her own events, especially when it involved getting to play Pathfinder and acquiring new Pokemon cards that her friends wouldn't have. Sitting down with the event catalog and letting your Big Kid explore their interests is a great chance to spend some quality time getting to know things you might not have otherwise discovered.</span></p>
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<p><em>That's what we've got. Hopefully it's helpful. If you've got suggestions, comments, or things the Geek This kids need to check out, please let us know!</em></p>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8603070020231253303.post-29580447113494379392015-09-02T11:42:00.001-04:002015-09-02T19:40:53.379-04:00GenCon with Geeklets, Part 2 (Infants and Toddlers)
<p><em>This is part 2 in a series of posts about navigating GenCon with geek kids. Part 1 (General Advice) is <a href="http://geekthis.blogspot.com/2015/08/gencon-with-geeklets-part-1-general.html" target="_self" title="">here</a>. </em></p>
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<p style="text-align: center;"><strong>Infants and Toddlers: </strong></p>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Big stroller. Tiny baby. Stark casual.</td></tr>
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<p>Practically speaking, small babies are pretty easy to manage in a con environment. You should plan to bring child-wearing gear, or the smallest stroller that you can manage. If you intend to take a stroller into the dealer's hall then please be aware of the footprint -- our jogging stroller is pretty substantial and we definitely found parking it on the edges of booths for browsing purposes problematic at times. Bigger booths with internal space were much less trouble. People are overall very aware of their space and we didn't really run into trouble with tripping or collisions. People are also very polite and did not give us mean looks or snide comments to our faces, and in return we tried to be as polite and careful as we could be. </p>
<p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Toddlers are a full-time job, and you should probably plan to have someone who can devote their attention full-time to child monitoring at all times. You would not believe how quickly a toddler can get lost in a crowded dealer's hall, when you just stopped for a moment to look at that game demo. For your toddler, you will still want to bring a stroller (again, small footprint please) or your child-wearing gear of choice, because you will be doing a lot of carrying. The convention hall is big. Really big. You are going to wish you had a grownup to carry <em>you</em> sometimes.</span></p>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Really really busy.</td></tr>
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<p>The convention is busy. It is loud. It is full of sudden colors and intense stimuli. Your primary responsibility is going to have to be to your littles -- be aware of their responses to their environment, especially in the dealer's hall, and be prepared to get out if need be. Pax had no trouble with the noise and chaos of the dealer hall, but Cap'n's first trip was a little more stressful. He got overwhelmed at times and was just at the starting-to-walk phase so he wanted to be down and exploring frequently. We spent quite a bit of time that year at the Family Fun pavilion, which is located at the back of the 100 section of the dealer hall, and the surrounding booths and demos.</p>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The kids waited in line just for this stuff.</td></tr>
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<p style="text-align: center;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); line-height: 1.3em;"><strong>Feeding:</strong></span></p>
<p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); line-height: 1.3em;">I'm on my third child and by this point I frankly don't give a hoot about whether people's sensibilities are offended by breastfeeeding in public, but not everyone (or their babies) is at that place. </span><span style="line-height: 1.3em; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">This year Family Fun introduced a crawlers space and a private nursing area, which had two chairs with arms and was a real blessing; additionally one of the convention hall women's bathrooms apparently had their powder room space set up for private nursing space (I never found it but I was told it was quite nice). It's a pretty substantial walk to the back of the dealer's hall (pro tip: they usually have an open entrance along the Capitol Ave hallway that's less crowded and a LOT closer to the Family Fun pavilion) and I'm lazy, so I also took an <a href="http://amzn.com/B002WGI5NO" target="_self" title="">inflatable My Brest Friend</a> nursing pillow (I saw a lot of <a href="http://amzn.com/B007U8FT7Y" target="_self" title="">travel Boppy</a> pillows too) and a cover and just grabbed whatever space was available in hotel lobbies or the chairs along the concourse to feed Pax. Nobody gave me any trouble, and I had some great conversations as well.</span></p>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Also Donuts. </td></tr>
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<p><span style="line-height: 1.3em; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">For older infants: </span><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Bring baby food or a grinder if you are going to need them -- there is a pretty limited store selection in the near vicinity, and the food trucks do not cater to the bland and mushy palate. If you need a fridge in your hotel room, ask the hotel in advance. Frequently these are provided, but we have had years where there were no fridges or a waiting list 1-2 days long for fridges. If it's extremely important (breast milk supplies, special dietary needs) then you may consider bringing your own cooler for emergencies.</span></p>
<p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">This is covered in more detail in the General Advice post, but if the food trucks are not an option for your toddler, there are some bistro-style cafes in the convention center and Circle Center does have a food court. Most of the restaurants near the convention center also provide a kids' menu, so your picky eater will have eating options. However, lines are long in the surrounding few blocks so you will need to plan your restaurant ahead. Pack snacks. </span></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"> <strong>Baby-Specific Needs: </strong></span></p>
<p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">We have yet to find a bathroom -- men's or women's -- in the Indianapolis Convention Center that has a changing table. Be aware. The surrounding hotels do have some changing tables, including in the men's rooms, but not all hotels and not all bathrooms are so equipped. Bring a changing pad and be ready to do diapers in a down and dirty fashion.</span></p>
<p>For emergency supply needs you may be able to get some things from your hotel's front desk, but if not then the closest pharmacy is the <a href="http://www.cvs.com/store-locator/details-directions/6607" target="_self" title="">CVS on Ohio Street</a>, approximately 3/4 of a mile walk away. They carry a sufficient selection of baby and nursing supplies and the staff are very nice. It's not a 24 hour store so check the hours before you go late at night. Circle Center Mall has children's clothing but is pretty upscale so does not carry basic necessities that I'm aware of.</p>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Family Fun Noodle Fight</td></tr>
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<p style="text-align: center;"> <strong>Entertainment:</strong></p>
<p>If you do cosplay, we cannot recommend Baby Yoda highly enough. We've done several variants on this costume (this year Etsy provided a crocheted Yoda hat) and it's quick, easy, extremely recognizable, and eminently washable. Also for older babies Luke Skywalker's Dagobah outfit is basically a beat-up white tank top and some cargo pants, and you can carry Baby Yoda in a backpack to complete the set. </p>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cosplay Baby!</td></tr>
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<p>If you're a little craftier, I took some pre-con time with my embroidery machine (you could economize and buy patches too) and did some baby costumes based off of a Simplicity baby dress pattern. They were a huge hit and Pax got a lot of compliments. Everyone loves a geek baby.</p>
<p>As far as doing activities, we had good luck with the CCG hall and game demos; parking the stroller next to the game space was no problem for larger booths or playspaces like Iello's demo room. Over-18 and over-21 activities generally will not permit even infants in, which I find to be a point of respect for the other attendees and we did not try to take Pax to see the <a href="http://theglitterguild.com" target="_self" title="">Glitter Guild</a>. Concerts are often pretty tightly seated but you can put a stroller in the back of the room and sit with it there or lap-sit your baby; we have taken the littles to see <a href="http://marcgunn.com" target="_self" title="">Marc Gunn</a> play in previous years (I recommend the Cat Lovers show) and that's gone well when they're not overtired.</p>
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<p>As far as playing in scheduled games, most convention games are on a time-restricted schedule and often players are booked back to back. If your baby is going to require attention and take your focus away from the game (hint: most babies will not reliably schedule a two-hour nap during your game slot) then you should have someone who can care for them during the game. If you don't have someone, then ask your GM in advance (if possible) how they feel about having the distraction. Then ask the other players. Be prepared to bow out if your child is going to negatively impact others' con gaming experience. As a GM, I've seen distracted players sometimes pull down the whole run, while other groups are able to work around them much more flexibly. Playing with strangers is an adventure in itself.</p>
<p>Strollers are not welcome in True Dungeon, nor would I recommend trying to bring a carried infant into the space. It's dark, it's loud, things move around and there are lots of surprises. Signing a waiver is probably your cue that this is not a baby-friendly activity, if you make it that far. Get a baby-watcher and have yourself some adult fun, if True Dungeon is your thing.</p>
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<p style="text-align: right;"><em> ...next up: <a href="http://geekthis.blogspot.com/2015/09/gencon-with-geeklets-part-3-big-kids.html" target="_self" title="">Part Three: Big Kid Activities</a>...</em></p>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8603070020231253303.post-3497441235121588022015-08-09T18:15:00.002-04:002015-09-02T21:45:07.502-04:00GenCon with Geeklets, Part 1 (General Advice)
<p> We have a history of taking our infant children on trips that may appear ill-advised at first blush, starting with Cups and the expedition to Chichen Itza and Cancun at six weeks of age. In keeping with that grand tradition, Pax made her first convention appearance at GenCon 2015 when she was just a week old.</p>
<p>I don't recommend doing this, but with a laid-back baby and a quick delivery recovery it went better than we had planned for. We'd booked no events for me at all, anticipating Pax and I would have to spend our time in the hotel room or hunting for safe feeding spaces; with family and friends assistance I managed a True Dungeon run, a concert, and some game demos in addition to haunting the vendor hall and wrangling kids.</p>
<p>We started taking kids to GenCon when Cups was three years old, and she'll be turning nine before the next con. The Cap'n came for the first time at about nine months old. This was also the first year that we've dared to bring all of the kids for all four days (we checked in Wednesday night and checked out Sunday) due to an abundance of caution and consequent school schedules. We learned a lot, and we confirmed some suspicions that we've had before. Cups is now old enough to independently participate in GenCon, and required her own badge this year; next year she'll be officially over the threshold for the kid registration but this year was her emotional and social transition.</p>
<p>So this is an extremely long and multi-part post about doing GenCon with young kids -- 8 and under -- based on the last six years worth of experience. Our kids run the gamut from gregarious extrovert to highly functional introvert to extremely chill baby, so your mileage may vary with regard to fatigue levels and meal options. Also, we're interested in everything (we call it professionally curious) and so our experience is often a high-velocity, high-intensity mix of gaming, geeking out, and cosplay. Not everyone enjoys everything.</p>
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<p style="text-align: center;"><strong>General Advice:</strong> </p>
<p>GenCon allows you to pre-register your children and I highly recommend it. For free, you'll get a sturdy plastic armband that has your kid's name, your name, and your phone number on it. It's the venue kind that snaps on and can only be removed with scissors. Your kid will also have a badge number, which means they (or you for them) can register for KID tagged events, participate in some demos that track badge information, and when they get found someone can call you.</p>
<p>Book a hotel closely connected to the convention center (JW Marriott, Marriott, Westin, Hyatt, Crowne Plaza) if your budget allows it. It's going to be expensive. You are going to get your money's worth the first time you take your overstimulated overtired kiddo back to the room for quiet time and naps, without waiting for a shuttle. And you <em>will</em> need to take your overstimulated overtired kiddo back to the room, or you may find yourself shouting. In public. Tears will ensue. You may need to take your overstimulated overtired self back to the room for naps as well. Conventions with kids are exhausting.</p>
<p>Work in pairs or groups. If you can connect with another family with kids and share duties, all the better, but at this age someone will need to be with the kids all the time, so don't plan to do adult activities unless you have someone willing to sit out and kid-watch. Same thing with playing RPG's (tabletop games are sometimes more forgiving) -- if you can take turns and not schedule yourselves for the same time slots, then you'll get more out of the con and there will be fewer opportunities for tears. If you are in a mixed marriage with a non-gaming spouse then bully for you. Your spouse may find one of the more than 250 spouse activities appealing, so again schedule accordingly. We are blessed to be part of a multi-family gaming group, and even our childfree friends are child-friendly, so sharing duties makes it possible for everyone to have fun. If you are alone at the con with kids, make friends. Use the sitting services. Carve out time for yourself.</p>
<p>Once our kids hit about 2 years old, they start to be more interested in the convention itself, particularly in the social aspects. There's a lot to do and a lot to see, and it can definitely be overwhelming for the toddler and preschool demographic. Our 3-6 year olds have previously come just on weekends and evenings, and we've found that about two days of full-blown Con Time are about the most they can handle. After that, the whining increases and the fun quotient decreases.</p>
<p>We have several sets of grandparents whom we have frequently taken advantage of, and they will take the kids to offsite activities such as the Indianapolis Zoo, Whitewater State Park, or the Indiana State Museum -- all of which are in downtown Indy (the Zoo is a bit of a hike) -- the Children's Museum (3-4 miles north), or even to the mall (connected via skyway) for some decompression time. If you can build this into your schedule you may be able to extend the con time, but there is so much going on that it's hard for the littles to process four whole days. Your littles may vary.</p>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">World's hungriest baby.</td></tr>
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<p style="text-align: center;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><strong>Feeding:</strong></span></p>
<p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Feeding littles: This is sometimes challenging. Despite our best efforts, the Cap'n considers anything other than box-to-plate macaroni and cheese, quesadillas, and chicken nuggets to be "not food" of the type that mysteriously populates his plate at home and which he will only eat under duress. Cups is only slightly more adventurous. The food trucks do not typically serve anything that could be found in a box.</span> </p>
<p>If your kid is okay with their macaroni coming with real melted cheese, or their quesadillas with chicken, or with eating real food then I would recommend the food trucks as a great place to find food adventures. If your little is picky, then there is a food court in Circle Center Mall, hot dogs and pizza at the cafe under the escalators, nachos and hot dogs at the food stands in the game and dealer halls, or chicken tenders and burgers at the mini-food courts by Georgia Street and Hall B. Be aware that the convention hall food courts close early and often, as well as charging convention hall prices for convention hall food quality (the brats are not bad at $4 a pop).</p>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Serious cupcakes</td></tr>
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<p><span style="line-height: 1.3em; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Cupcakes from the food trucks should be obtained on a 2 kids per cupcake basis because they are huge. Seriously huge. Also, ice cream served in a donut is surprisingly tasty. Do not forget dessert. If you are a beer drinker, Sun King will sell you beer that you can then carry around the food truck area, but you can't take it outside the fenced-off section of the trucks. Do not feed this to your littles, obviously, and they can't go into the beer garden proper, but one person can buy multiple beers, so here is another place where friends can help.</span></p>
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<p>DO NOT forget to eat at regular intervals. Hungry gamers are grumpy gamers, and low blood sugar makes everything worse. More importantly, hungry littles are terrible tiny animals that will quickly evolve into kaiju and destroy your entire experience. Breakfast is extremely important when you are going into the con, and your hotel will serve a very nice and potentially extremely pricey version of this to you and your children. If you do not have free breakfast provided, the costs will add up quickly (our family of four has historically rung up at about $60 for breakfast at the hotel). We've found that it's more frugal and quite satisfying to have breakfast in the room. Pop-tarts, granola bars, single-serve cereal boxes with milk (you can buy UHT treated individual milk containers that do not require refrigeration), and juice boxes can be obtained for less than $60, and will last the whole con.</p>
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<p><span style="line-height: 1.3em; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Snacks are similarly something that you will want to have on hand -- nothing in the convention center is quick or cheap, and our littles frequently conflate boredom and hunger. Nobody has given us any trouble for munching on granola bars, trail mix, or goldfish, but if your little throws food there may be consequences. Again, if you have perishables or special needs on your list, you may or may not have a fridge in your hotel room. Some years there is a waiting list for refrigerators. You should check with your hotel first if you are going to need one.</span></p>
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<p style="text-align: center;"><strong>Entertainment:</strong></p>
<p>You're going to spend a lot of time at the Family Fun Pavilion in this age group -- our kids' favorite activities in the 3-6 year range are the Family Fun Pavilion, the babysitting services, and asking cosplayers about their costumes. Do not despair: there are activities for your child that do not involve you sitting on a chair making awkward conversation with other parents. We'll get to those in a moment.</p>
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<p>If you need a babysitting service, that's been provided historically by <a href="http://www.sitterstotherescue.com" target="_self" title="">Sitters to the Rescue</a>, which is an Indianapolis based group who take over a room and provide childcare to the con. They charge about $12 an hour per child and have previously had a 3 hour minimum, but our experience with them, both at GenCon and at other conventions where they have provided childcare, has been stellar. There are appropriate staffing levels (licensed and bonded, background checks, etc), craft and art supplies provided, toys for the littles, and they make an effort to know the children they're caring for. It's not cheap but it's quality. As far as I know they will take any age child.</p>
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<p>Family Fun, however, is <em>not</em> a babysitting service. Someone responsible (over 16) will need to be with the kids there (They will check. They will call you to come get your kid, if you leave them. This is their legal responsibility). It is, however, a combination craft space, game space, and place to blow off steam. There's a big table full of games the kids can play (most of them have all their pieces) and tables to play them on. There are crayons and coloring projects and art supplies. There is usually a table doing plaster masks or crafts (they have aprons even!) and then there's an active space. This year there was a castle made of boxes with hidden passages, some cardboard knights' armor, and the off and on appearance of pool noodle swords. On the weekends, there's face painting ($5-$20).</p>
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<p>Our kids think this is some kind of child paradise. This year Cups has finally started to grow out of it but prior to that the only appeal they found in the dealer's hall was the Family Fun space and its environs. Fortunately, there are some kids activities scheduled in the general vicinity.</p>
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<p>Captain Pete and his crew do a daily kids event at 11 AM - it's one generic ticket or $2 to pre-register, and we've never been turned away. Basically there's a themed adventure game involving getting dressed up in costume and doing some kind of turn-based kid activity. Frequently this involves playing with plastic figures, then setting up a diorama and throwing balls at said plastic figures. It's sort of organized chaos and it's been going on for years, so they're good at what they do. Prizes are often given out.</p>
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<p>There are several other events by the same crew, as well as some other kids' games in the area. Take a look at the catalog. Lots of them take just a few generics. <a href="http://herokidsrpg.blogspot.com" target="_self" title="">Hero Kids</a> had several games scheduled, and the Monte Cook crew were running demos of <em><a href="http://www.nothankyouevil.com" target="_blank" title="">No Thank You, Evil!</a></em> at their booth, which I cannot recommend highly enough.</p>
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<p>KID category events do not require an official badge for participation, so you can browse the catalog by category. This section also includes preregistration for the babysitting services -- theoretically there is a quantity limit so preregistering may be a good idea if you know you're going to require a sitter.</p>
<p>There are usually some creative activities that kids can participate in -- in the past there's been a group making boffer swords (I didn't see them this year); there were some make-your-own pony tails or wizard wand workshops offered this year. As mentioned above, plaster crafts are usually going on a rotating basis within the pavilion itself and provide a good intermittent activity (you have to wait for them to dry before painting).</p>
<p>Walking the dealer's hall with young kids can be daunting. You may not get to demo All The Games that you want to look at; I'd recommend keeping a to-do list and adding booth numbers/names so you can come back on your own at a later point in the con to demo or ask questions at your leisure. Consider getting the Cheese Weasel ConQuest cards and asking your littles to help you find particular booths -- the Cheese Weasel booth is usually located outside the dealer's hall and they'll be happy to give you a set of cards with sponsor booths on them. Find all the booths and return the cards to be entered in a drawing for some great stuff, or don't worry about returning the cards and just use them to keep the littles motivated. (Note: New this year is an app for Android that mirrors the cards, if you are a smartphone kind of geek).</p>
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<p>A surprising number of vendors have kid-friendly games and will demo to your littles' level. Many of these vendors cluster near the Family Fun Pavilion, but so do some of the Edutainment games (pro tip: kids can always tell when you're trying to teach them something) and the more mainstream game vendors. Don't hesitate to ask about demos at any booth, but especially the ones that have bright colored boxes. Don't be afraid to try things out. You are the only person who can accurately judge your kid's game-readiness.</p>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Life Sized!</td></tr>
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<p>Calliope Games, Iello, and Mayfair have historically offered games that were able to be played with our kids. Sometimes your littles will want to play a game that is above their level (Cap'n really likes to do this). It's possible with many board games to give your little their own pieces and then just ignore them for scoring purposes, while letting them flagrantly reinterpret the rules. We've had a great experience with other con-goers being willing to cut the littles slack in the demos as well. Iello's demo room (outside the dealer hall) was especially good about helping us find age-appropriate games.</p>
<p>Mayfair usually has some Really Big games outside the dealer's hall, and Iello had a "life-sized" King of Tokyo game. Try and get in on one of these if you are able; the sheer scale of the pieces makes it a lot of fun but it is a ticketed event. I'd recommend getting a ticket for you and letting the little play your team rather than to try to ticket them individually; this will cut down on frustration for other players if your little gets bored/wants to cheat/the novelty wears off.</p>
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<p style="text-align: center;"><strong>Cosplay and Costuming:</strong></p>
<p>From a cosplay standpoint, kids love to dress up and our kids find cosplay to be an important part of con-going (we have to specifically tell them if we are going to a game-focused con so they have their cosplay expectations set lower). Simple costumes of the Hallowe'en clearance variety may give your little everything they want and more; the thrill of dressing up is often sufficient as its own reward. If your Big Kid wants to do more or you can't find the costumes you want then remember to keep it simple. The costumes I make for the kids are machine washable, have reinforced seams, and can go on and off in five minutes or less. There should be no wigs for littles -- if you want colored hair, buy spray-on temporary color. Our Big Kid wore a wig for Leia this year and there was a lot of "Mom this itches" going on, so plan accordingly.</p>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Princess Leia and Dazzler</td></tr>
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<p>Props and accessories MUST have a place to hang or fasten on to the costume -- learn from our experience carrying Captain America's shield through multiple cons. Face paint is a lot of fun but will wear off onto everything in this age group so I tend to avoid it or use tattoo glitter (the kind that goes on with glue and requires alcohol to remove) to decorate faces. I'm all about durability.</p>
<p>Our reception within the cosplay community has been fantastic. Don't be afraid to not know who someone is cosplaying as, and encourage your children to ask if they are curious. Some of the scarier costumed folks are super nice under the masks, and as a general rule of thumb cosplayers are passionate about the characters they're playing and will be happy to fill you and your kids in. Short simple answers will usually satisfy the curious little (my favorite was "I'm Bane. I'm a bad guy who fights Batman"), so don't worry about getting into inappropriate backstory. Cosplayers are pretty smart people; they're not in the habit of giving gory details to tiny onlookers.</p>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lining up for the Cosplay Parade.</td></tr>
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<p>Take pictures. Ask first; not only is it polite but you'll get a better shot. Your little is generally welcome in the picture and it's a real thrill for them sometimes. Please don't stand in the middle of the walkway and shoot -- it leads to congestion, bad pictures, and worse karma. Similarly please don't shoot in the middle of the vendor hall. Step to the side (most experienced cosplayers will do this automatically) so you don't clog the hallways. Also try not to stop folks if they're clearly heading somewhere in a hurry as cosplayers also game and go to events, and it's hard to choose between beinrude and being late.</p>
<p>Your littles and Big Kids will probably enjoy the costume parade (either participating or watching), although the under-5 crowd may do better watching than walking. It's on Saturday afternoon about 3, and parades through the entire first floor of the convention center. Kids can usually get priority seating at the front of the throng or on shoulders for watching. It's very exciting to see your heroes on parade and many of the cosplayers doing Disney or superhero costumes are happy to be recognized. We're specifically instructed NOT to stop for pictures during the parade, so be forewarned, but waving and high-5's are acceptable.</p>
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<p style="text-align: right;"><em>Next up: <a href="http://geekthis.blogspot.com/2015/09/gencon-with-geeklets-part-2-infants-and.html" target="_self" title="">infants and toddler-specific pointers</a>...</em></p>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8603070020231253303.post-76652643130352380812015-05-16T10:13:00.001-04:002015-05-16T10:13:56.916-04:00Take a LetterThis morning, I was reading <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/monikabartyzel/2015/05/13/disney-spent-15-billion-to-limit-their-audience/">this article from Forbes</a>. In it, Bartyzel, the author, talks about how Disney spent $15 billion in order to acquire Star Wars and Marvel, but then focused all their marketing on the young, male demographic. Basically, they took all the girls out of their merchandise, going so far as to make a toy based on a scene in <i>Avengers: Age of Ultron</i>, and replacing Black Widow with Captain America. We've run into this before looking for superhero fabrics and outfits for Cups our 8-year-old comic book geek girl, only to find the <i>Avengers</i> apparently only comprised of Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, and Captain America. (To their credit, DC has been better about including Wonder Woman, which is likely why Cups has so much Wonder Woman stuff, even though I'm a huge Marvel nerd.)<br />
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I brought this article up with my spouse, and we commiserated at Disney/Marvel's lack of desire for a wider audience. (At least, in their toys. Marvel's stories, especially in the comics, has become incredibly diverse as of late, while their movies are moving in that direction.) Cups overheard us, and she became angry as well. My spouse suggested she write a letter to Disney about it, so off she goes to get paper and a pen to write her letter.<br />
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We have a 4-year-old as well. Cap'n was also around, and not to be out done by his big sister, he wanted to write a letter, too. He said he likes girl superheroes and wants more toys with them as well. I had to help him with the writing of the letter, but he told me what he wanted to say and signed it himself.<br />
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Their letters finished, Cups went off to search for envelopes and stamps, since she was fully intent on mailing the letter. (And we'll get to that, as soon as I find the right snail mail address for it to go to.)</div>
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Cap'n went off to play with the Rapunzel play dough set.</div>
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Matthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12300714202584895563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8603070020231253303.post-995766212952332482015-01-25T22:10:00.001-05:002015-01-25T22:10:44.159-05:00Pregnant Cosplay<p>So we made a tactical error and it appears I'm going to be due on the first day of GenCon 2015. I blame GenCon for being almost 2 weeks earlier than usual, but it's not that far from home to the convention and the kids are going to be out of school and able to attend all four days, so we don't want to write the con off, so we're currently counting on the fact that my babies have to be forcibly evicted from my body rather than coming on schedule. </p><p>In other words, we booked a hotel room for GenCon today, muaha.</p><p>The problem is cosplay: I have a lot of neat ideas for cosplay costumes including having the kids team up with cosplay buddies for Magic Knights Rayearth, putting my spouse in blue spandex for a gender-swapped Mystique and Magneto (this one had great potential for nursing adaptations), the Incredibles (with modifications for the whole Spandex thing); and dressing the baby up as a small mongrel dog and going as Dorothy. But none of those are particularly amenable to a 40-week pregnant belly. </p><p>Enter the Internet. Exclude immediately any scene from <em>Alien</em>. </p><p>I've been doing some research, and since I'm not about to pick up an anime series just to find out about a pregnant character, we've narrowed the field to several choices: Amy and Rory from the Doctor Who episode "<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1591788/" target="_self" title="">Amy's Choice</a>" (very casual and requires only regular clothing); the Death Star (I have seen this done quite well and I'm sure the spouse could be some kind of pilot); or the current front runner: Padme and Anakin Skywalker, from Revenge of the Sith. </p><p>Did you know it's sort of tricky to find pregnant women in prominent roles in sci-fi and fantasy movies? They are mostly shown being <strike>stuffed into refrigerators</strike> dying in childbirth. </p><p>Padme, on the other hand, gets to negotiate an entire movie of being pregnant before she goes the refrigerator route, and her wardrobe ranges from the action-hero <a href="http://www.padawansguide.com/sleeveless.shtml" target="_self" title="">Mustafar "sleeveless" dress</a> (leather cross-bracing around the breasts makes it probably a no-go for me, as Boobzilla does not need any highlighting) to the <a href="http://www.padawansguide.com/hairbuns.shtml" target="_self" title="">giant black velvet cape</a> (not in August, not at GenCon) to the fantastic <a href="http://www.padawansguide.com/green.shtml" target="_self" title="">embroidered green velvet</a> "at home" number (pretty, very pretty, and probably too complex to fit to my changing body). It also includes several simple drapey nightgowns, which I am eyeing right now and attempting to decide whether I want to modify the <a href="http://www.padawansguide.com/lavender.shtml" target="_self" title="">Veranda nightdress</a> to include straps (this will involve some new stitching or embroidery techniques and about 10 yards of silk satin) or mock up the embroidery patterns along the edges of the <a href="http://www.padawansguide.com/lightblue.shtml" target="_self" title="">aqua georgette</a>. </p><p>I'm really eying the georgette because I think it's super pretty and I like the sleeves better. The spouse likes the idea of dressing in full Jedi leathers and acting moody, and if we're going to do a prequel cosplay then I suppose Revenge of the Sith is not the worst one to do. </p><p>The entertaining part of this was when Cups came in on the discussion. "Are we going to do Star Wars? Can I be Princess Leia?" Followed by Cap'n an hour later: "Can I be Luke Skywalker?"</p><p>Yes, kids. Yes, you can. As creepy as it is, that's totally appropriate for you to be. </p><p>I'm going to have to start working on this soon. I'd better make up my mind. </p><p> </p><div style="text-align: right; font-size: small; clear: both;" id="blogsy_footer"><a href="http://blogsyapp.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://blogsyapp.com/images/blogsy_footer_icon.png" alt="Posted with Blogsy" style="vertical-align: middle; margin-right: 5px;" width="20" height="20" />Posted with Blogsy</a></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8603070020231253303.post-71816187138727639632015-01-14T21:27:00.001-05:002015-01-14T21:27:38.139-05:00Bumpie
<p>"You're 12 weeks", reads the chipper little text next to the star designed to grab my attention. "Take a bumpie!"</p>
<p>I am twelve weeks pregnant and this is the eighth time I have gotten the same chirpy little suggestion. "Document your pregnancy!" "Show off your changing body!" </p>
<p>Here's the thing: I don't want to take a picture of my belly, which at a little over a hundred kilograms does not lend itself well to documenting the evolution of something roughly the size of a kumquat (have you ever seen a kumquat? Because all I know is that it's about the size of Tiny Gotham right now). It's not any different than it was twelve weeks ago, because all the changing and growing is taking place inside my pelvic girdle. </p>
<p>And I hate the way I look in pictures. </p>
<p>This isn't my first baby: I know from experience that empire waists make my specialty-shop bustline look even more awkward, that at 30 weeks I am going to be still fielding "but you're barely showing" while I hold my breath to put on my shoes, that the nausea and fatigue and terrible heartburn I am feeling now will fade, only to be replaced by nausea and even worse heartburn if I stray from a carefully constructed diet because I know, on my third round, that I will have gestational diabetes and I will crave ice cream and I will hate being pregnant as much as I enjoy the fact that I am able to make a human being inside me, like some sort of living 3D printer. </p>
<p>But I'm still overweight, and now I am over 35, so I'm going to be an obese elderly multigravida with a history of gestational diabetes and a ten pound delivery in my past, and I don't know if I want to celebrate all of that. I don't know if I want to celebrate having my innards rearranged and my sleep disrupted; the daunting task of finding a nursing bra and a sleeping bra that fit; the impending dance of foot and fist and head and bladder and bowel that inevitably results in me being the losing party.</p>
<p>I'm a selfish pregnant woman: I don't like being uncomfortable and inconvenienced. I don't like having to prepare for the possibility that I can be explaining to someone why their baby is having trouble breathing while trying to stay on my feet as black sparks start to swim through my vision. I don't like falling asleep at 9 PM because I am spending all my energy gestating. And I don't like the strange alien feeling that I am a duality of people. But I like my kids. And I like babies, especially when they're mine. </p>
<p>We planned this baby; we debated the concerns with going off my medications and arranging for leave and managing my diet. We thought about it for quite a while before we decided it was something we wanted. And I want it. I'm happy that everything is going smoothly and I quietly panic every time something in my belly goes zing, even when I know it can't be related. I keep toying with the handheld doppler in the office and thinking about trying to listen to see if the baby is really in there. But I don't care for being pregnant. </p>
<p>When I was pregnant with my first child, everyone told me that I would feel something I had never felt before when I first looked at her face. I was told I could never prepare for the rush of emotion, for the sudden outpouring of pure joy and love, for the bond that would connect me with my baby forever. I got the miracle line and the wonderful line. I got the best thing ever line. </p>
<p>My mother was more prosaic. "I think," she said, "The first thing I said when I saw you was 'ugh'." </p>
<p>I didn't say 'ugh' but I did have to check with my fellow resident. "She's cute, right? She's not an ugly baby?" Because I thought the baby was pretty cute -- and I'd seen a few by that point -- but I was waiting for the bang kapow of mother love to hit me, and I didn't feel it.</p>
<p>She's eight years old now and I still never felt it. I spent a long time trying to figure out what was wrong with me, that I liked my baby, even loved my baby, without being overwhelmed or awestruck or taken by surprise. That I didn't have the sudden urge to do anything but catch the first good breath I'd had in months. So I asked my dad, who knows about things. </p>
<p>"Nah," he said. "That's just the way we are." </p>
<p>I'm an obese elderly multigravida. I don't want to take a picture of my belly at twelve weeks. It looks like my belly did before I got pregnant, and I didn't like it then. Maybe I'll take one next week. Maybe not. </p>
<p>That's just the way I am. </p>
<div style="text-align: right; font-size: small; clear: both;" id="blogsy_footer"><a href="http://blogsyapp.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://blogsyapp.com/images/blogsy_footer_icon.png" alt="Posted with Blogsy" style="vertical-align: middle; margin-right: 5px;" width="20" height="20" />Posted with Blogsy</a></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8603070020231253303.post-25842600165814462692014-05-10T23:33:00.001-04:002014-05-10T23:33:37.340-04:00Nerd Rage: Captain America's little flawGot a childfree night tonight so we went to see <u>Captain America: The Winter Soldier</u>. This is not a movie review, nor will it contain spoilers, I think. If you are extremely sensitive to this sort of thing, please stop reading now, go see the movie (because it is amazing and awesome and I freaking love what Marvel is doing with their properties) and then come back so I can complain in peace. <p> </p><p>As noted above, I really enjoyed the movie. I enjoyed the lack of gratuitous T&A, the large quantities of gratuitous stunts, and the infinite supply of explosions. I also enjoyed the plot. I say this as someone who does not read a lot of comic books and comes into the Captain America franchise completely blind to prior history, so bear with me if you don't like something they changed from the long history of comics. I don't know what you're talking about. All I know is that Steve Rogers and his red-white-and-blue suit represent the ongoing struggle between truth, justice, the American way, and the moral high ground, and I <em>like</em> it. I also really like Scarlet Johannson kicking people in the face, which is another bonus for Marvel. There are some things Marvel is still working on in terms of translation from print to screen, but this is a story worth telling.</p><p> </p><p>I just have one serious quibble with the movie, but it's kind of a big one. And in this case I'm going to spread the love around, because I have the same quibble with DC in <u>Superman Returns</u>. It involves hospitals and operating rooms and more specifically code scenes. (No spoilers!) And both movies have the same flaw. It's game-breaking for me and it disrupts my suspension of disbelief, and I said that while talking about a 95 year old genetically reengineered man with a flying shield made of vibranium while using my serious face. </p><p> </p><p>It is this: CPR.</p><p> </p><p>In Captain America somebody dies (hint: It's not Dumbledore). In Superman Returns, the Man of Steel sort of semi dies (if I just spoiled that movie for you I am sorry but the statute of limitations is one franchise reboot). Both of them wind up in a hospital being attended to by a team of Serious People in Scrubs, which is what we all look like when bad things happen in the hospital and is so far believable. Both of them are hooked up to cardiorespiratory monitoring, which is also part of the Bad Things Happening algorithm. I will even give Superman a pass on the whole "they showed a flatline before putting EKG leads on him" thing because Dramatic Timing (also, what are they starting an IV with in that scene? A spinal needle?). But here's the part that is driving me berserk: </p><p> </p><p>Two movies. Like ten minutes of scenes with People Trying To Die and telemetry showing Bad Heart Things. Not one single chest compression. Superman is being wheeled in, bag-valve-mask ventilated, and nobody is on the cart doing compressions. It's the number one rule of resuscitation, people: it is so important that we don't even tell lay people to do rescue breaths any more. If you have an unresponsive victim who is not breathing or only agonally breathing, you do chest compressions. Over the sternum. Two inch compression depth, one hundred times a minute. Count out "Staying Alive" in your head to keep the beat. </p><p> </p><p>Chest compressions, people. </p><p> </p><p>When Unnamed Dying Character is lying on a surgical table after taking multiple gunshot wounds to the center mass, intubated and ventilated, and they are far enough along in the surgery to be getting out the suture, I expect to see blood everywhere. Buckets of it. I saw a chest wound. I expect that if they're sewing this character up there has been a thoracotomy or at the very least a chest tube. Someone has opened this person's chest. And abdomen. And there should be blood flowing. Trust me on this one, trauma surgery is messy and involves emergency release blood units. </p><p>When you have a patient on the operating room table and they attempt to die on you, you don't stand around. Someone does chest compressions. A lot of them. A hundred times a minute. Someone else gets the defibrillator and someone else (probably anesthesia) pulls drugs. You don't stand around, comment "we've got V fib" (I checked, it looked accurate on the telemetry strip) and then wait for the paddles to show up. You do chest compressions. You shock the patient. You do chest compressions. You re-analyze AFTER you do chest compressions. You check for a pulse AFTER you do chest compressions. All the time you are pushing on the chest, hard and fast.</p><p> </p><p>And most importantly, when the line goes flat on the monitor, you push epinephrine and then you do chest compressions (am I repeating myself? Good). You don't stand around hoping that the drugs make it magically from the vein in the arm all the way to the heart. If the heart is not beating -- if you do not feel a pulse -- then sheer external effort is the only thing that is going to get blood to circulate through the body. It's the only thing that's going to move medications. It's the only thing that is going to give any resuscitative effort a fleeting chance of success. </p><p> </p><p>Unnamed Character lays on the table in the operating room -- in a trauma OR, I can only assume, because where else are you going to take someone with multiple gunshot wounds, and this is SHIELD, people are getting shot all the time as far as I can tell, they have to be prepared for this kind of thing -- and gets a couple of desultory shocks (good job turning up the joules to 200, that was appropriate) and a push of epinephrine (also good job, right drug) and then they just stand around for about a minute and wait to see whether magical epinephrine fairies are going to transport the drugs to the heart. </p><p> </p><p>Surprise: no compressions, nothing happens. So after a minute or so they give up, call Unnamed Character dead, and get on with the business of things. Never mind that no medical professional worth the surgical facemask is going to spend less than two minutes pretending to run a code. Never mind that if Unnamed Character has been so lucky as to have undergone a thoracotomy the surgeon in charge is going to rip open the wires and attempt manual heart massage (don't look shocked: I've seen it done on the cardiac recovery floor -- with temporary success, to boot). Never mind all that. The magical epinephrine fairies failed to perform, show's over, so sorry folks. </p><p> </p><p>If you're going to fake a hospital scene, at least put a little effort into it. Next time call me. I'll be happy to screen your movie so people can die convincingly. I've been there. We don't give up that easily. Not on Unnamed Character, not on anybody. </p><p> </p><p>Okay, nerdrage over. Go see <u>The Winter Soldier</u>. The bad part's only a few minutes long, and the rest is seriously awesome. But don't forget <a href="http://youtu.be/ILxjxfB4zNk" target="_self" title="">to do your chest compressions</a>. </p><p> </p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8603070020231253303.post-8204479725795022372014-04-22T21:05:00.001-04:002014-04-22T22:26:02.440-04:00"But why does he have girl's hair?"<p>I'd like you to meet someone: <br></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: none;"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/89781567@N05/13935371774" target="_blank"><img src="http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3815/13935371774_bdd8fd6e26.jpg" id="blogsy-1398219867869.2178" class="alignnone" alt="" width="500" height="281"></a></div><p>This is the Captain, or Cap'n for short. He's three years old and he is a boy. You can ask him, he's not afraid to make that perfectly clear. He gets angry when Daddy drives the car because then he has to sit behind me and "then we don't match". He likes things to fit into neat, tidy categories.</p><p>He also has his daddy's hair. And his great-grandfather's hair. And his mother's hair, when I was a little girl about his age. He wears it long, past his collar, and in curls. Sometimes in a ponytail, "just like Daddy". He likes it long; we've asked, especially on the mornings when he screams at having it brushed and runs away from the evil thing. He doesn't want to cut it.</p><p>I'm fine with that; I can respect it. I like long hair on boys and men (witness Daddy's ponytail). But Cap'n has a charming face and the morphologic androgyny of toddlerhood and it's a cultural thing to identify moppy blonde curls as belonging to little girls, so we are constantly catching strangers' comments about "her". I normally let them pass, having learned the hard way that correcting a stranger's assumption about the gender of my child inevitably leads to their embarrassment, but seven-year-old Cups is at that stage in life where she must make certain that everyone is completely accurate in all details at all times. </p><p><span style="line-height: 1.3em;">We had the kids out at a local con r</span><span style="line-height: 1.3em;">ecently in Wonder Woman and Flynn Rider garb, sitting around a table playing KinderBunnies and Spot It with some other kids (set up a game and people will play!) when one of the kids pointed at Cap'n. "It's her turn."</span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.3em;">"He's a boy," Cups corrected. "He's my brother."</span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.3em;">The child -- about six or seven himself -- looked up at me, clearly the only mother in the area. "But why does he have girl's hair?"</span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.3em;">I gave my standard answer. "Because his daddy does, and he likes it." It clearly wasn't satisfactory, but you don't argue with the Mom Voice. He muttered something about girl's hair and went back to the game, and I went back to thinking.</span></p><p>In case you missed it, we're raising <a href="http://geekthis.blogspot.com/2011/08/gen-con-update-gamers-and-kids-picture.html" target="_self" title="">cosplaying</a><span style="line-height: 1.3em;"> children. Costuming my kids is a labor of love and also an expression of art for me. But this year has been a challenge. We were in the preliminary design stages of doing <u>Mary Poppins</u>' "Jolly Holiday" costumes for the four of us (a project I am still finding alarmingly ambitious) when <u>Frozen</u> came out and the kids went gonzo. It didn't take long before there were demands for costumes, and it didn't take long for <em>that</em> to turn into What We're Doing For GenCon. </span><span style="line-height: 1.3em;"><br></span><br><span style="line-height: 1.3em;">Here's the tricky part: <em>Cap'n insists on being Anna.</em> I was okay with doing that for him, and worked up an adorable little vest-and-pants set inspired by a dear friend's quick sketch, but he was not satisfied. </span><br><span style="line-height: 1.3em;">"Mommy," he complained, "these are <em>pants</em>. Anna wears a <em>dress</em>."</span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.3em;">I'm going to go out on a limb here and make a statement that is true for me, and may not be true for other people: it is really <em>hard</em> for me to give my son the same liberty of style that I give my daughter. I had a hard time coming to grips with Cups's preference for dresses, ruffles, and the color pink; I wanted her to like jeans and eschew princess fluff. I'm having an even harder time letting Cap'n pick out the pretty teal Princess jammies he desperately wanted in the store, even though they're the same cut as the Lightning McQueen ones right next door. </span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.3em;">"How about big loose pants?" </span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.3em;">"Anna," he insisted, "wears a <em>dress</em>."</span></p><p>I thought: <em>His hair is already gender nonconforming. Everyone is going to call him a girl.</em> "I can do something in between?" </p><p>"Anna wears a dress. I want to be <em>Anna</em>."</p><p><em>I can't put him in a dress. People will be confused. </em>"We'll see," I finally conceded, which everyone knows is parent-speak for "I'm going to hope you forget about this."</p><p>I sat down with some women friends of mine at a party one night and told them about my son and his Anna dress, and my struggles. And with love and support they said helpful things to me. Things like "I would have expected you of all people to be okay with that." Things that challenged my thinking. </p><p>I remember when Cups was about four or five and my mother called me from the Big City three hours north. "There's a Disney Princess show here," she said. "I thought I could take Cups. They'll do dress up and makeup and things." </p><p>"I'll ask her if she wants to go," I answered, and my mother's surprise was audible.</p><p>"I thought you didn't want her to do princess stuff!"</p><p>I explained to her then that part of being a feminist to me involved letting my daughter choose her own path, and what was interesting to her, and that I had to respect that if she wanted to wear pink and lace that it was her choice to do so. Even though I can't stand pink and lace, and my deep abiding fear has been that I would have a daughter who needed advice on things like makeup and shoes, things I don't particularly care much about outside of which ones go with which costume. </p><p>It's <em>hard</em> to let go of the things I didn't even realize were so important to me. It's <em>hard</em> to be sizing a Scandinavian walking skirt to fit my three year old son's little Buddha waist. It's <em>hard </em>to think about GenCon this year, with Cups correcting everyone who calls her little brother a girl (although it's nice that he won't need a wig, just some hair color for the braids). There's a voice in my mind that worries about <em>what people will think</em> and <em>what am I doing, putting my son in a dress</em>? </p><p>But it's more important by far to let him know that he can choose his own path. It's more important to me that he learns that he can have faith in his instincts. It's more important that he learns <em>now</em> that the first law of cosplay is <em>make a costume you are comfortable wearing</em> and that nowhere does it say <em>worry about how other people think you look in it.</em> It's more important that he learns that his family will stand up for him and support him and respect his desires. I committed myself to this path when I said I'd raise my daughter to be strong and independent and true to herself. How can I do any less for my son?</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8603070020231253303.post-51099745884837556422014-01-26T22:25:00.001-05:002014-01-28T22:15:19.734-05:00Everypony was There (Cups turns 7)<p><em>Warning: This is kind of a mommy-blog post about my daughter’s birthday, so if you don’t want to read the details of some stranger’s kid’s party skip this post. There’s no roleplaying or board gaming in it – except we did play a round of Seven Wonders while the kids tried to kill the pillow slalom with swords. It’s mostly just me laying out what we did because somebody else might be able to use it. </em></p> <p>I’m still adapting to the idea of having a seven-year-old, but there she is, all seven years of dress-wearing pink-loving makeup-requesting her. And this year, in addition to makeup (makeup? seriously, where is she going to wear lipstick and eyeshadow? To first grade?) she wanted a My Little Pony party. This may or may not have been triggered by the Pinkie Pie piñata we found at Wal-Mart, but there’s something about throwing a party for my seven-year-old with a My Little Pony theme that appeals to my inner seven-year-old. </p> <p>So My Little Pony it was. And operating on the guiding principle (evidence-based even) that money is best spent on experiences rather than stuff, party planning began. The problem was that Cups wanted to invite Friends that Are Boys, and first grade involves the awkward stage of gender differentiation where it’s So Not Cool for boys to do Girl Things. If we’d waited a few years for this theme then we could have invoked the Brony Principle, but seven-year-old boys are pretty clear on the whole Girl Stuff problem. We didn’t want them to feel unwelcome, so we had to balance the Girl Stuff out with All Kid Stuff. </p> <p><em>Spoiler: These things work out in the end, if you feed them enough sugar and leave the hair chalk out where they can get to it. Also, my husband rocks the blue glitter nail polish. </em></p> <p>We decided on a lunch party, mostly because we like to feed people and it served as a nice opening period for people to drift in. We scheduled it for Saturday at noon and on Friday night the snow and wind started to hit. Saturday morning I took a test spin, noted the plows were out and the town roads weren’t really that bad so we called everyone to tell them the party was on and started food prep around 9:30. At 10:30 AM I got the text message that the county had gone to a red alert (a Snow Emergency, where it’s technically illegal to be on the roads) so we called everyone again and told them the party was delayed to Sunday. Then we put the food in the 22 degree garage and tried to console Cups. </p> <p>Sunday morning at 8 I went out for a test spin on the roads (hey, I’m a doctor, I get to drive to the hospital for rounds in a red alert) and noted that the city roads were bare asphalt without any snow or ice. We live in a rural town, so county roads by report were still really bad, but the city was normal driving conditions. I called M and we decided that we would go forward with the party and let people use their own judgment about whether to come. At about 10 the county was downgraded to orange, so it was no longer technically illegal to come to Cups’s party and 13 kids showed up – most of them with their parents. </p> <p><em>We are going to be cleaning up this house for weeks. </em></p> <p>I am a consummate scavenger of Other People’s Ideas on Pinterest, and I’m going to try to give credit where credit is due in the following breakdown of the party: </p> <p align="center"><strong><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxvk1EiJpcHJP1S20rJXtyh4fX11RUf6K95EnyKWZzrkK4uuX4hyphenhyphen_6Hk5pzEC7rlk-z52RDSd_WwOKynYD1NrAb9XHFSN6ar6vQUit9ho6IfhinEbWuP9RCRaJclPcOhZ_B_ZuuOvxf_ia/s1600-h/P1260073%25255B3%25255D.jpg"><img title="P1260073" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; float: none; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-left: auto; border-left: 0px; display: block; padding-right: 0px; margin-right: auto" border="0" alt="P1260073" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7kI9e2NxLvJZ7bpYlVg3ZMjixZZIlRNRwU3QkM5-M-_4e3eCvWbegh3k6BE1LK8-vTXp4mviI6msAAKdDsH3pco5B87PD9UoJBsMdcgGFC3UqYClQ2o6h0mtwSwBJKPHNm6vkB_NDuqS0/?imgmax=800" width="244" height="184"></a>Lunch and Nibbles: </strong></p> <p>I bought some <a href="https://www.etsy.com/listing/163350816/instant-download-my-little-pony-rainbow">placecard templates</a> from <a href="https://www.etsy.com/shop/IrrelephantDesigns">Irrelephant Designs</a> on Etsy, which were charming (if a little small, margins were adjusted to get them to print on our postcard cutouts) and paired excellently with the personalized <a href="http://www.shindigz.com/party/rainbow-personalized-favor-box/pgp/678favper">chevron favor boxes</a> I found at a reasonable custom print price from <a href="http://www.shindigz.com/">Shindigz.com</a> (despite the shady name, they delivered a quality product in good time). We labeled all our food, aiming for one per pony represented on the cards, plus Spike since there was a duplicate pony. I got the flower trays as a surprise find at Dollar General while hunting for something else entirely.</p> <p><em><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5ZGtu1tYjXyCfuU2Sya_ASFKlncA8Zv7Lk6UdQ5Ph1_Od3i4ly3rxE05FW6HlAubn_qsgh1PF944v0iLgr1EP223P3MgROGbBBdsO8SgAhj66LXvWwQm-ACw9FPhvbwK3JpsKBbbHvyXs/s1600-h/P1260041%25255B3%25255D.jpg"><img title="P1260041" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; float: left; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="P1260041" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUMVCPj51HfTvY22k8PXNGy5w3JqoJV6rjRyQaWzJj8wKz5NQpPkcjkpbflzjS69Bq2VEcjZXjn7GNmk66OssnnoxQQGj0qU2ZDXrqaWxEBDXzfRtKYB2f7KwocrVHOQ8j34i1V9iVWPZL/?imgmax=800" width="244" align="left" height="184"></a>Rainbow Dash’s Rainbow Fruit Salad: </em>Adapted from <a href="http://www.daisyathome.com/2013/08/07/my-little-ponies-theme-party/">Daisy at Home</a>, we went with a flower tray rather than a rainbow design, but same general idea: a rainbow of fruit with marshmallow crème dip in the middle (recipe follows). Our rainbow’s color sequence gave a little bit to my distaste for melons, so we used strawberries, apples, pineapple, green grapes, blueberries, and red grapes. We sliced some bananas to put in the rotation but they were too chunky and not asthetically pleasing, so we put them off on the side instead and they really didn’t get eaten (this may be partly because of the 24 hour party delay)</p> <p><em><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHGrsKwjdCACznhK9zd73Wi0ssZLnP2ImmwRZVGvtgASD1wPv4F2nuSfWuIUM9wgrsvQNBdeYfOTfoTxuiG1tVE-A93N0aAnalyh1PvxuL6QSVeTgvHLFtgUEKp0pQrKmHFfnjXBB1QT43/s1600-h/P1260047%25255B3%25255D.jpg"><img title="P1260047" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; float: right; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="P1260047" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEis3-OooGDgCIuf3vJvGbT27bBRNPllSxtFhvGGrOETL-p6quVhRQEhEF2jFQPDLsqTBRtKiyYUZU95eOQMWcQWXqrvFEiUYilNNhDc6Rxy9iB2A63Mnq6PpYjP9a0tIOp1lLtH3VVSB8cw/?imgmax=800" width="244" align="right" height="184"></a>Pinkie Pie’s Flower Bites: </em>Borrowed directly from <a href="http://lifewithmoorebabies.blogspot.com/2012/07/bria-my-little-pony-party.html">Life with Moore Babies</a>, we made PB&J and ham and cheese sandwiches on honey wheat bread and then used a flower shaped cookie cutter to cut them into floral shapes. Lettuce, tomato, and condiments were on the side. (This is the point where I ask if anyone has a brilliant idea for what to do with the peanut butter and jelly crusts, because I can’t bear to throw them away. Current plan is to feed the birds this summer with them.) For scaling purposes, we used the very largest flower cutter that would still make a flower shape from the bread. I made 16 PB&J and 16 ham and cheese sandwiches total for 13 kids and 11 adults and had about 4 PB&J and 1 ham and cheese left over. </p> <p><em><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWj29sRskGfJ5a2fEk42IrOxEa0GFUk9TdU8mG8LH8lswwZUabSPqxXSlm0I9vWuRsrV08HJxr_wxVI2-BpHOXK_xCsPkZp7GnrqCFD_dchOIgrP-WWHw2uCVSJg07FrvVU6-vFmh1m2V0/s1600-h/P1260048%25255B3%25255D.jpg"><img title="P1260048" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; float: left; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="P1260048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcHUhf59vp9ptetB2Ra_QztHJfXgVmIXGqbQgHSertWFBBGbcASzFDwCRX7i8DU9dJZibr9iLx0Bv6kTaPdNWabWcc1jhaXPjhVZodlve8QJv1zxS9FEE_JSLu5lKPiq7MWGQwig46gCuX/?imgmax=800" width="244" align="left" height="184"></a>Princess Celestia’s Celestial Clouds: </em>Okay, so this is one of those times where we used “we’re having a party” as an excuse to buy more kitchen gadgets. Major purchase for the party was a <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Nostalgia-Electrics-PCM805RETRORED-Series-Sugar-Free/dp/B004XD8FFW">home cotton candy machine</a>. We bought the Nostalgia Electrics hard and sugar-free version in order to have the capacity to make sugar-free cotton candy for our diabetic friends as well as the thrill of Life Savers Cotton Candy (it’s super good!), and did the cotton candy in advance over a few days. Best output on the machine was definitely from commercial floss sugar, but we got some very respectable cotton candy from Life Savers, candy canes, hard crack caramel, and sugar free Werther’s drops. Best of all, each cone contained less than a tablespoon of sugar and kept kids occupied. </p> <p><em><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgOooOIHE_EE_MzK2fAn9n6M5bPxcWRsH4Y7lXX2jZZRb63mYiEAENcWlzFtUNu3RBKpuZCYvt1g2f1gwYCpUqmSaO249F6jg8djJZ8PoTgEn95m_3MpC96JnyRxb5kIb7McCfnCazigzw/s1600-h/P1250007%25255B3%25255D.jpg"><img title="P1250007" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; float: right; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="P1250007" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjE0qLWmYwp43CJaEMNweXPBhcMfvzDz_ZG6EXW78Q2JZtnE_NOuLueS_iT7rMYd9gKI5bHIX8C1_7q4l6fbtVXRAL3tR0ZSrF7vfDWgJC3U5ie-kHIEJRPUEUu6ViWnomotnqglVL80-5m/?imgmax=800" width="184" align="right" height="244"></a>Applejack’s Down Home Applesauce</em>: From <a href="http://mycrazyblessedlife.com/2013/08/28/birthday-party-for-2-sweet-girls/">My Crazy Blessed Life</a>, except I try to limit the silverware requirement at any kids’ party to “cake and ice cream only” where possible. Also, Mott’s tends to put sugar and/or high fructose corn syrup in their applesauce, and I don’t dig it. So we bought a lot of GoGoSqueez from Amazon and put that out instead. There were cries of “ooh, GoGoSqueez!” It got eaten. No applesauce was spilled. And we have leftover applesauce for snacks and lunches. </p> <p><em><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRswHhaTLgYhLd0BMmNdfGaOs82AUwF1-jEKBYyIMunOzoGA5MbNhAKGMO30flkMdZE4SJ6DEkCYQqzH3aFrMm8NoxBRUCIIBGhLsUKgD3AAPy8FHTiJSt-r4IsU0Y5yMOfUJL7BZ_nIjS/s1600-h/P1260065%25255B3%25255D.jpg"><img title="P1260065" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; float: left; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="P1260065" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHNIX2-fqId43t6Z-ga5lQvM5DZkblROjAOhpTKXoq5hvSxGSNFuaNTteUDbq-h412C1g7UKjwEpTYCTHD4E1Gg4bdOw3cjp-7sdsxAmMrr9Z16ef5iqlmLYX3BTjr693DV7b3Pr_dokuT/?imgmax=800" width="244" align="left" height="184"></a>Rarity’s Fromages du Campagne:</em> This translates to Rarity’s Country Cheeses, basically. Originally, we were going to make Rarity in charge of the cotton candy, but I had a Princess Celestia food tag and couldn’t think of anything more royal than cotton candy. Also, I remembered that I had a bag of cheese cubes in the freezer that I really wanted to make disappear, so we went ahead with the gussied-up cheese tray. It’s all purchased; while I know I <em>can </em>make a cheese ball, they always come out looking like misshapen lumps. </p> <p><em><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE5TVV0G0V5IJm6ThSCnzP81fMLJOyiBOXTnae10vnocncOZpRc5RnyF_MljiXkd-XAsSZKH6zAuFsaWUz8EIw-t52tVhjH_UyDLn6naoKwPEtbUe65L1v1LIM64Z1Jne_porkrW9lCFIS/s1600-h/P1260054%25255B3%25255D.jpg"><img title="P1260054" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; float: right; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="P1260054" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEganapJI-AQVHdDJHzYHL6VNiywKCFYUga7kmQDG8YE1toNe2Zin7hjBzd1waoZxzM7IOmtIfZBnxESxC_fO0GheHSqhCaYZZ01h9Vh5RLwU-XlVbfkkVa1Zy8ittqn0O8yV4igu3OV5Lap/?imgmax=800" width="244" align="right" height="184"></a>Fluttershy’s Bunny Munch: </em>What better way to get kids to eat their vegetables than to propose them as pony food? We went with Cups’s favorites: kalamata olives, broccoli, carrots, celery, and then for the grownups we made a (very mild) pico de gallo and filled the last slot with tortilla strips. Middle of the tray is Marzetti’s Ranch dressing and off to the side is <a href="http://www.tastefullysimple.com/shopourproducts/allproducts/oniononion180105.aspx">Tastefully Simple’s Onion Onion</a> dip, which is kind of a staple for us.</p> <p><em><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEqxtdRrfKxTx0L_5Ers4-HfjsWtCIKd8k7VoU2jX9Crzyuc7w6IBObRb-LG-MWGTu7TwEOHPrM9L3eV4EOJ65s1xayzfUfDyuWyNVJwQtIbtVOgZi7a7CXDFzrQDRvaeoNjlsQJ6VQyvX/s1600-h/P1260071%25255B3%25255D.jpg"><img title="P1260071" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; float: left; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="P1260071" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7kPobXwAbjlGCZj_kATHAqEGVm57a-Gs47YIXhMys-8oFNDhpTyJ5NAMFDdarwvF4xZZVfuCS2dkiTy6_wT58WbZfTSu1r_jwy6_I2M0irN2BWefM31DEhhiM0gVygYpNjRzNlr8w8lEJ/?imgmax=800" width="184" align="left" height="244"></a>Spike’s Dragon-Grilled Chicken Skewers</em>: We have some friends who are gluten intolerant, so sandwiches as a main dish don’t cut it alone. We hit on doing chicken skewers and were initially going to do long kebabs. Then I found a couple packages of three inch bamboo forks at Dollar General (never send me shopping alone) and M turned them into charming miniature skewers that were bite sized and easy to handle. They’re chicken tenderloins, chopped into bites and stuck two to a skewer, then brined in a light salt solution overnight (plus an additional 24 hours for weather delays) and then grilled with an olive oil brushing. We grabbed a handful of dipping sauces for our condiment table, and the kids really liked them. The brining leaves the chicken very moist and tender in the middle, even after sitting in the crockpots on <em>warm </em>for hours. We made 106 and had maybe a dozen left. <br><em>Prep note: It took M about an hour to grill all 106 skewers on our indoor range grill, so plan ahead. </em></p> <p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhenS0Fw2b0YYSgKINdv-RqxZfKH5jJ2Ouqxr8-2c9YRQ6uCs-9pEOET5w1EQj_BP6HvQCxWlOu5lPD5gsXtpU7C4yQvHQGjLU8BtH763WJ_TQhcgQ6kgpfjmOSZueJF11aFUkLR00R4uRX/s1600-h/P1260063%25255B3%25255D.jpg"><img title="P1260063" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; float: right; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="P1260063" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsSUvV5DywDKIsSNxUt0ZNSaKVfODGRGoYdt1kXdeHVzAk9qVFn6gi9BT1zWcsjySzuydvG06ayt-SYwq9OvjicXQ3Slvc16s5IKYC1db5Zxh6EheYhEwAj9qxgxLBC5Wrxpked0l35ACG/?imgmax=800" width="184" align="right" height="244"></a> <em>Twilight Sparkle’s Magical Color Changing Punch: </em>Another nod to <a href="http://www.daisyathome.com/2013/08/09/magical-color-changing-punch/">Daisy at Home</a> for this one: This is a fantastic idea and the kids really had a blast with it. It’d be excellent for a science party as well, since the indicator is so easy to make and the color change in lemonade is so dramatic. We used a simple syrup (1:1 water and sugar) boiled with chopped red cabbage in it. This gave our indicator a really nice deep blue color and also masked some of the cabbage taste to the juice (but not the smell and not all of the taste, oh no, not all, so if you are looking for a really sweet cabbage juice this is what you want). The original recipe calls for lemonade, but I am never satisfied with lemonade as a drink (I make it with lemon juice and water, and no sugar, but nobody but me drinks it like that so I always feel like it’s too sweet) so we went to work trying to come up with a punch that had some flavor and enough acidity to turn the indicator colors. </p> <p>We started with Sprite, which turns a brilliant pink but is undrinkable with cabbage juice in it. We tried a multitude of things but finally settled on a tropical pineapple-orange punch (recipe follows) that if you add enough indicator turns from yellow-orange to a sort of ruby grapefruit color (I did not get a picture). <em>This also proves that if you make it fun, kids will drink anything. They added far more cabbage juice than I could stomach, just to see it change, and then drank the stuff without hesitation. </em></p> <p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpRS-z70NXCsokabiuSxzcJHLC2s4ompRged2Wl8cBSSM7FSLLn5TvpYEwYoBfi2BNP0LuQS7ArmG_Uz9shXfX1VQ9HqirhIkYA6Q81WVXzgGAKD2wCyHSFTXU1a5EnFsdQWVWieFLj8qi/s1600-h/P1250019%25255B3%25255D.jpg"><img title="P1250019" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; float: right; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="P1250019" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiU39CWtdFlacxJn2EkDCb8r80DRVwzkER6o-mlpwnaWfYtqswDTcpArQT2CnlRysspqE0Yb9e-jG9ZXklqButm3FX08X4cTrBDlvmBBmyYI8EEAfHJt327Le0NVLyWs3aPa5bZttOgqB2h/?imgmax=800" width="244" align="right" height="184"></a>During the lunch period, we set up the dining room table with some color-your-own ponies from Oriental Trading Company (I am trying to move away from buying cheap stuff there and doing more on Etsy etc but I still run up a bill every time we have a birthday), markers and glitter glue pens. Kids really got into that, and I will be scraping glitter glue off the table for a while. It was nice to keep them occupied while the slower eaters were coaxed into another few bites of sandwich. </p> <p>Then we took everyone downstairs for the wearing-them-out portion of the festivities. </p> <p><strong>Party Games: </strong></p> <p><em><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0csgI5qh46CpIS1-dxaWtUNCRAl32EKyLA6NyLByNtLBWX0Ei1TyV2VOGf0n7PrpHWhc-Ki2fXfTwwTmXJcsR9i3R_cA6C_X84cqrEbYHDElZvMYUTiqMkANwLSsLEHNtZBbgk9tCxG3O/s1600-h/P1260063_1%25255B3%25255D.jpg"><img title="P1260063_1" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; float: left; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="P1260063_1" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3JQKvI1K8uOOOt9vNHFqoQpHtWEPOJvjbvwZQH3is9WwVZYWTk2BQbgdV5ak-3DcUBSOA27ECLVexgo07CKp_tGe8TIr7JfOgr3pE1NOUTDp7LFMR3Ny9i6bIptitrSKZvg6CUVA7XJZh/?imgmax=800" width="184" align="left" height="244"></a>Pony Dressup: </em>I am reasonably certain that if M never sees another set of pony wings come out of my sewing machine, it will be too soon. I have a <em>thing</em> about handcrafted party favors, and the only thing I could think of for this party was pony wear, so pony wear it was. I sourced a pattern for <a href="http://www.sugartartcrafts.com/2013/09/my-little-pony-costume-sew-along-day-10.html">wings</a>, <a href="http://www.sugartartcrafts.com/2013/09/my-little-pony-costume-sew-along-day-6.html">horns</a>, and <a href="http://www.sugartartcrafts.com/2013/09/my-little-pony-costume-sew-along-day-5.html">ears</a> from <a href="http://www.sugartartcrafts.com/">Sugar Tart Crafts</a>, but I am Lazy and I hate stuffing things so I substituted a thick layer of craft interfacing for the stuffing on the wings. I also put buttonholes on the bottoms of the horns and on the ears (dear Light if there is something more annoying than sewing 8mm buttonholes in pony ears I hope I never have to do it) and threaded them onto headbands for the kids to wear. We made more than we needed, of course, so everyone got their choice of colors. <br>As far as tails go, I went with the good old-fashioned yarn hank tail (wrap yarn around your arm from palm to elbow until you have a bunch of yarn. Tie one end around a belt or piece of twine. Cut the other end. Repeat twenty-five times) and tied them onto the kids. Participation was excellent in this and I noticed that the boys (we had four total) picked up the purple (“no, it’s not lavender”) sets with some enthusiasm. I had expected them to go for blue or black. </p> <p><em><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLrNCKqoATeUUZVnH1Cj25f65v1IOiSpeGsuDoSsm-xe0iLq8pVSP34X1-m_3LVV47ajN9SJv4kwhSk8miMilfwAsapeNUuzQweUi4JqYSK1ILzqIR8rMWB-YBOny0XqCE4v-F1UNhaiFR/s1600-h/P1250032-2%25255B3%25255D.jpg"><img title="P1250032-2" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; float: right; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="P1250032-2" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtB4-gTy6JC08CuzDo4Ox0jWERaDSHkA6N7XcJRAJEs4HmLnYzUy1SNgQ_SmQobV98g8rN2eslVkU1BSS6fV0vod9kFty7Mskh6xBIc0BzDZl2ODGFMofyGh8oGlj0A35Gdnny5WdYVBzl/?imgmax=800" width="134" align="right" height="244"></a>Rarity’s Boutique:</em> Idea from <a href="http://www.daisyathome.com/2013/08/07/my-little-ponies-theme-party/">Daisy at Home</a> yet again, and quite possibly the part of this party I was most nervous about. We set up a table with nail polish and nail stickers on one end, and hair chalk (we got two kinds: <a href="http://www.hothuez.com/">Hot Huez</a> and <a href="http://www.walmart.com/ip/Fing-rs-Crayola-Hair-Color-Stix-3-pc/20631688">Crayola Hair Stix</a> and I would hands down do the Hair Stix over the Hot Huez – not only were the sticks cheaper and colors brighter, they outperformed the Huez compacts in ease of use, staying power, and sturdiness of applicator) at the other end. I hung some glittery hair clips and some odd spiral beaded hair extensions on bobby pins (Dollar General again) on the sign, and we painted nails and chalked hair for nine little girls who all wanted it done. </p> <p>We picked up some new polish on our outing for this (I do not normally do nail polish, so we don’t keep much on hand) and I have to say Good Things about a product for a moment. <a href="http://www.piggypaint.com/">Piggy Paint</a> is not cheap (Walmart has tiny bottles in 3-packs for $3.85) but it is extremely low odor, nontoxic, and removes with ethyl alcohol. It covers well and dries fast. I don’t know for durability, but I am really impressed with this stuff so far and most particularly with the part where I didn’t feel like I needed a smoke machine and lasers after helping paint four sets of nails. </p> <p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8bD8jHSPqQev3tsFzbckdJzlYIQhw4qUjyywoWzE12kVReKLw2PKFsTkBpsVXxy0KsQgN1-NPza3uUj5rdQznP8QAUydD4GBkbGku0lL4MDWCiGwb_XfHt4JgHiSr5kCUzkFNPxJOxgqw/s1600-h/P1250031%25255B3%25255D.jpg"><img title="P1250031" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; float: left; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="P1250031" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitz_WRhCzpjXx6RVnQTKFGnAqNAkZzy5NN3idx2syAEWxl0Gl0vwcFCeKGRDm9h6SbmX0xPqYanCeWAj3XS5iHlQ7DXBQy2qv9CRN7k1cN6qxPKICiVeecsT9_r9dBjKDbJX9lVk5jv6to/?imgmax=800" width="184" align="left" height="244"></a>This was the Girl Stuff moment that I was really concerned about. So concerned, in fact, that we had a simultaneous Pony Beading station for making bead necklaces and bracelets in case the boys wouldn’t buy into the hair chalking. Also, M did his nails with blue glitter before the party, in order to be a Positive Role Model for the body decorating. They were kind of standoffish at first (“what’s <em>that</em>?”) so we ran them through the obstacle course first to break the ice. Later, the youngest of them came over to me and asked about the hair chalk. I obliged, putting blue stripes in his hair. And his brothers. And then I just got up and left the chalk in plain sight, and they giggled and chalked among themselves. Someone got his nails painted (we had blue and black and green, just in case). They even got into the photobooth.</p> <p><em><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhduDnPMb0eRnzkIQpUHBIyVYOqGqunHNU5gNk2jP8mzGyhXdTy7viwovBnJQGof76pPqafeHwljBPkxgFuZBmgeMx5I_fME6kLtzALrVy2fopAiXpcBbtz_sNY_bNHGKdacYAzBqSIgySH/s1600-h/P1260087-2%25255B3%25255D.jpg"><img title="P1260087-2" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; float: right; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="P1260087-2" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPv4ukNpIDeB1fJ_7H2JS_kWndN9sSLhmylLuGedGzPHOrbphxtzYWviDXG5FBrNUTLruAy8PhUoGtWW_VBSJgaewfK_vnLfn7ojaTpTIjIaG_69WBiKa4blC1BHQvoCA3OQ-wA8loQpIW/?imgmax=800" width="166" align="right" height="244"></a>Photobooth: </em>The photobooth was an absolute must after the mad success of Captain’s party. We set up the camera with an Eye-Fi card and linked it into a computer with automatic photo printing software (I am cheap, I used an evaluation copy) hooked to one of our old printers. Snap – print. I’m not ecstatic about the photo quality (at least in part due to not setting up the camera with a tight enough zoom) but it made the kids happy and they all made sure to pick up a picture before leaving. </p> <p>This is the second photobooth frame I’ve made, and I’m pretty happy with the process. We use a large sheet of foamboard and cut a square out of the middle. Then I design my header in Word using an appropriately-themed typeface, set it to outline mode, and print it out big enough to cover the top. I lay the paper on the foamboard and use a blunt pencil to trace the letters with lots of pressure. This leaves an indented letter guide on the foamboard, which I trace and fill with paint markers. It’s not perfect and it takes some work to get the indents to show (hint: strongly angled bright light) but it means I have great kerning and the typeface is usually much more consistent than my own lettering. </p> <p>For the bottom, we come up with a selection of appropriate taglines (“Most sparkle”, “120% cooler”, “Super Awesomest”, etc) and print each one on a half-sheet of paper. Laminate (I just switched from my Xyron cold laminator to a Staples brand heat/cold laminator and I am really digging the heat lamination) and attach Velcro to the back of each tagline. Attach Velcro to the middle of the photobooth and you have an instantly changeable sign. Kids dig customization. </p> <p><em><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnI1fcjAvFIt0tCinj2OLAPNPgEWRQkrtGYqJ8WB6zgObwWvf8ejmV7fo-btNeQrZZ3m6sNyN3eqdDNeToe0ZQULkQc5cCc1ACwqYwsVFkFXqzHzmM3pM21Kzld3Y2dPOSmgBT7M6N-1nW/s1600-h/P1260089%25255B3%25255D.jpg"><img title="P1260089" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; float: left; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="P1260089" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS-zBFf32fzvDvP7SYv7CE5mMKglEj7FNc680Lsko_rUyMzj3awZGCfPOOx95l2JqAdQrcScCaUmrmmyZQVUImMnLQ9FyqlUmfJ-ZzEv0tWwxOVeKqZXeB6WgQy71XCVFF5q29-PriNXs9/?imgmax=800" width="244" align="left" height="184"></a>Pony Beads: </em>We bought some <a href="http://www.orientaltrading.com/pony-bead-bracelets-a2-57_284-11-1.fltr">bracelet forms</a> and beads (Colorful beads! Metallic beads! Star shaped beads!) from Oriental Trading, then added some stretchy plastic cording for longer projects. I figured beading was something that Even Boys Do and it got some interest. By far this was the least popular of the activities (although the younger kids enjoyed it and a lot of bracelets got made), something I attribute in part to the really obnoxiously un-tieable plastic cording and the way the beads fell off if you opened the bracelets wrong. On the other hand, we have a whole lot of shiny metallic beads for projects. </p> <p><em><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZJUC0BHNYSr5PgQXKwXwY7mUwvPkhhjwNhZhOMNe2aZvB6921wavBB7b7oY4PovXqNWsz6tP91VtgAod5z2c9MTCyqWM4XRiIjQYfKBOv455zzFcJUewa874LbK-GUTYchABCTcLxRNFA/s1600-h/246px-AiP_CM_Rainbow_Dash.svg%25255B2%25255D.png"><img title="246px-AiP_CM_Rainbow_Dash.svg" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; float: right; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="246px-AiP_CM_Rainbow_Dash.svg" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhN79XwgaS8kL97U2FA2XljCdeZ-Bhyphenhyphen3WNJh2-HrP6AC8UmztKSO_t9wgb-Qi1vVtsD6G29fE2epFlDhu1ug1Nz8vhH7xOMjbm-Mytei5eXLMhF4pBhSo3ssvYjE6AFLBuNgtS68HcZWRyG/?imgmax=800" width="128" align="right" height="244"></a>Cutie Marks:</em> Absolutely necessary for ponies are the cutie marks. This is another area where we put some thought into the Boys Attending problem, as the main characters in MLP are all female. I considered face paint and then I considered my drawing ability, all the other places my skills would be needed and the amount of time painting faces requires. So we went with option 2: temporary tattoos. For the record, if you want the actual cutie mark temporary tattoos, <a href="http://www.hottopic.com/hottopic/My+Little+Pony+Cutie+Mark+Temporary+Tattoos-333924.jsp">Hot Topic</a> is your store of choice. Alternatively, you can buy the temporary tattoo cards (was this a collecting thing?) on Amazon for like a dollar a tattoo. We originally anticipated 18-20 kids so we were looking for a higher quantity and variety. We settled on printing our own. </p> <p>We got the images from the <a href="http://mlp.wikia.com/wiki/Cutie_mark">My Little Pony Wikia</a> which has a gallery of cutie mark images (both official and fan-created in the MLP games). It was an exhaustive fit of downloading, and of paying attention to what we were getting (still thinking of the Boys at the Party), which meant that we wound up with Bacon, Skulls, Dumbbells, and Tornadoes as well as more traditional marks. I will note that there was a big argument over the Bacon cutie mark, and one of our little girl guests wound up wearing it home. We printed them (using the Contact Sheet layout for 35 images to a page) on home-print <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Silhouette-MEDIA-TATTOO-Temporary-Tattoo-Paper/dp/B0043WJ3OA">temporary tattoo paper</a> (no I do not own a Silhouette cutter, which is probably to my disadvantage) and ran them through the laminator on cold phase to apply the adhesive. </p> <p>Everyone wanted a cutie mark. Two or three or ten. We had enough for everyone to have several, and a number of kids tucked some extras into their favor boxes to take home. It set us back $18 (we got extras in case of errors) for 70 tattoos and we got to design what we wanted. I think it was worth it. I will note, however, that these temporary tattoos apply just like the traditional kind but when on they’re more like stickers – the adhesive is a flexible plastic film, so they will peel off more easily. A Silhouette or other cutting machine would reduce this film issue. I will leave the judgment as to whether this is a positive or negative to the reader. </p> <p><strong>Obstacle Course: </strong></p> <p>If there is one thing I have learned as a parent it’s that the secret to crowd control in large groups of children is motion. Keep them moving from one activity to another and make sure there’s a reward at the end of it. This will make sure nobody gets distracted and will also put some competition into the problem. While I was painting nails and chalking hair, M was leading groups of kids through the obstacle course (did I mention we have a really big basement?) We did most of the following activities with a stopwatch in hand. The actual function of the stopwatch was to lend a sense of urgency. </p> <p>We put up a sign at each station with a little rhyme about the station and some instructions, but still found that shepherding the kids through the stations in small groups to work cooperatively where possible produced the best results. Each station had a themed completion token (small square of cardstock with appropriate clip art on it) to record times on for each kid. </p> <p><em><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhTmIYRnawNNESEho5fFv5Tc6oF6T9MIQvYz8ykoo3jVDDS8Posv1YfQXC6hkw6zrbHbvoUEvWx2t4gSngJdNHt6QUQoEk496eTwS61dxC6BlzQ_dIpjOhCr0cr8OyHPPeHpE31TBz2XeT/s1600-h/P1250022%25255B3%25255D.jpg"><img title="P1250022" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; float: left; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="P1250022" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwaY3GnBie2AdmAR_cvwl2ReKjyL8SyglEnwSyjpErqPT-hCgM6FTkjsEUWnZgdtXwdz8vSRw68uEtZNRSg-zHyS2n63PneYwWZC_fB03eQaz_T6THEe8oV29gnT5E4SNa1ySsKY4xSn3l/?imgmax=800" width="244" align="left" height="184"></a>Rainbow Dash’s Cloud Slalom: </em>We are packrats (hence: big basement) and don’t throw things away until we can no longer find any use for them at all. This led to our having at home in the basement seven extra pillows that were in use only for occasional guest bedding. I bought some cheap pillow protectors with zipper tops and installed grommets in each corner, then suspended them from the ceiling using a staple gun on the rafters. We duct-taped arrows onto the free-swinging pillows to make a slalom and timed kids going through. It’s amazing how dizzy they get when dodging pillows left and right. </p> <p><em><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNVPDsrKT-CqFouoxXeFqal4oc7GLqzMsyCjRN2j56Jftf4fcSvGU7RzUOUIiOgJ8d7a3PafwMUXwL9sOzCIueTFiAQ5fIiPvI3vhRroI2prmiSNDxPJ1LMpxEjFwrW0QkuXtlzdLypyR0/s1600-h/P1260093%25255B3%25255D.jpg"><img title="P1260093" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; float: right; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="P1260093" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjE9Y9by6LDDwSmh7ZehPPv5LIWveV9KhT93Cbk0VvBmpACClDP1kJitN3EHD3P8YWeyoby0u-rz8gt-4pZtUJYaWrj-rn-LRZTHR_9L0gR2wBeVVcK5CQa7QThy_Y-KcnSkJsFEgQd4Ghb/?imgmax=800" width="244" align="right" height="184"></a>Fluttershy’s Forest Friends: </em>This station would have been easier to make if it had been “Fluttershy’s Undersea Adventure” or “Fluttershy’s Cretaceous Rumble”, given our selection of stuffed animals, but we made it work. We hid seven stuffed forest creatures (loosely defined) around the room (including a magnetic bat attached to the support I-beam) and had the kids hunt down all of the creatures. We provided a list of animals, just in case there were problems, but working as a team the kids didn’t have much trouble. </p> <p><em><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5_jxUAbopBXmzWwbeMV0VtIjBgfRUQUYLifpwjvF1yChpM_VYwDWWDWqt5W2hv5G30j2LopxfOo6QCEGnmJmUlH5qZb-O2jdhhEReaybuGv0L9sAHLi4u2Lds4KQGzNO8a_DVeG8IRf6u/s1600-h/P1260100%25255B3%25255D.jpg"><img title="P1260100" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; float: left; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="P1260100" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpK47xVnoqQ-zgEeFfaVoQiCcK7tMqbVc-nCjiv9pUBi4M5o39aVtGZlQ0CXNnPlGKHgFuVFnKcpUOTcKQ9u0KKYColsvGDzX4Tv0vhN0gPEQTXd2L1MNtcO8J6C8jRqFWY9A_CYbULlqV/?imgmax=800" width="244" align="left" height="184"></a>Applejack’s Apple Stand: </em>This one went through a bunch of iterations. I knew I wanted it to be a “find the bad apples” puzzle, but we couldn’t settle on what kind of apples to use. Real ones seemed wasteful and fake ones were either too expensive or too tiny – plus, what do you do with a bunch of fake fruit after the party? Then we found an apple sorting toy that looked educational and appropriate for our needs, so we bought a set of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Learning-Resources-LER1023-Attribute-Apples/dp/B006SDC9VG">Attribute Apples</a> and made them part of the present loot. They come in a little cardboard bushel basket and suited our purpose perfectly: nine of the apples (one of each size and color) have a little worm sticking out. The kids worked together to find the bad apples and save the apple stand, and we have a new educational toy for the Cap’n.</p> <p><em><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAn5l5OmkoEu3JuS751JXkLfSCIqOPFMQS8PWGxEcMYzccoW6h4JmTyfYr7CWLtdmT9B68OK4bQuXdWPB7rZgypi8rJD9HYN0InUH6FMH-UWgqB9Fnko-Xc9eg4cQmkYIM4qz_aErUQWU2/s1600-h/P1250035%25255B3%25255D.jpg"><img title="P1250035" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; float: right; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="P1250035" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4T8WeTDbQgybaN2ioDbx_mPuQPUXBVPrZNjDhtthCL7hnhTanjlSCeyFRjipl5GGnFCUZUSENSOeEJ2qW_9PRyC-ucYE6HqjgSdvQ8E8EHeoVfciMBAEgiqc0HKo8Z190QXdKLEcuhTeB/?imgmax=800" width="244" align="right" height="184"></a>Rarity’s Fashion Fiasco</em>: Dollar General provided a large quantity of ribbons for this project, and in doing so (they’re sold in 9-yard spools) decided the length of ribbon to work with. I threw in a few spare ribbons from my craft remnants as confounders and taped everything to the heating duct (large flat ceiling surface that holds tape, don’t judge). The kids had to find three matching ribbons, pull them down, and make a braid for Rarity’s high couture. Turns out seven year olds aren’t good at braiding. Also, for the older kids, three feet of ribbon takes a while to braid. We modified this on the fly to “find three ribbons that match”. <em>Prep note: confounders are really important, as is having more sets than kids. We had fifteen sets or so and the pickings were pretty easy for the last few.</em></p> <p><em><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8IZLJEDj0PojOjHxGRp11czYOQfSORnLDkZAr2kRS7epzQoxDekMymLbqbmshiAeEv9ZG9uvZObnwXTPE1cCwH2AqnsQNDn8zwbXEzRBuf8aSTJYOrxQYI-5Spz4g1w9A1k0QIhvDoo9q/s1600-h/P1260097%25255B3%25255D.jpg"><img title="P1260097" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; float: left; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="P1260097" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi93Zg8UKJv6V9LMZCBM1K8i2WH4O5irFRF0EoaXeOQynOMhuSmbt37yrZ4XfYP2GUypK4K1VKxBv7se9Fe8QRCUFzWi80VbRqdgpkCzsmLqjZujHw8YycCPmojzg6mdIDaCzm7YFQBN9_C/?imgmax=800" width="184" align="left" height="244"></a>Twilight Sparkle’s Library Emergency</em>: Grab ten books of varying sizes and scatter on the floor. Ask the kids to sort by size. Largest book has the token. Be prepared to answer the question: “Largest like tallest? Or widest? Or Fattest?” Also, maybe next time don’t let the seven year old choose the books. Some of them were the same size. </p> <p><em><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPGTV-4-JkkjI65rcOZxMu9cSDSKH7dnVWEwjPfJSu276IMeBgE3PlnMd-yTLeeGL_cDsUX4z9954nPymyKH1nCMJHnp0zrxwjD6uJa08atHgIiYvXpuMIRQsu140zc9wrLW1W-ztvjnzH/s1600-h/P1260081%25255B3%25255D.jpg"><img title="P1260081" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; float: right; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="P1260081" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1MGCq6xJvmch48wfsQX97pd7a-RXS8dlbPOmqGZCeInmAibzWR7WP13wYvQjnqiTCIEphMkiv2YftOdHuYn3yI0PUKh3fKkRU5Gv-SzlwN9rkTL2jqq5_eIfeaBMxobNuUxUm8HG5m1pZ/?imgmax=800" width="244" align="right" height="184"></a>Pinkie Pie’s Party Pop</em>: This one was quite possibly the second favorite (after the slalom), owing to the fact that you can only pop balloons once per balloon. We stuck the completion tokens in balloons (<em>prep tip: round the corners, they go in better</em>) and blew up the balloons, then told the kids they had to pop the balloons without using their hands. Most of them got the hang of sitting on the balloon and bouncing against the concrete floor pretty quickly. Apparently, popping balloons is something kids like to do. </p> <p>Everyone who finished the obstacle course (that’s everyone) got a mystery pony package. We wound up ordering these direct from <a href="http://www.hasbrotoyshop.com/my-little-pony-mystery-figure-case-pack">Hasbro Toys</a> since Walmart wanted enough for them individually that we were already going to be spending the cost of a case on our anticipated kid load. We also bought a blank pony for decorating as a present and got the free shipping discount, since we were close and the pony was less than shipping. The kids really liked the surprise ponies, and I think there was some trading going on. I know one of the boys got Flam, and was really excited to have “a pony with a ‘stache”. </p> <p><strong>The piñata: </strong> </p> <p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTQVj3jG4HZetRx9dQI26AoQHpt57Frh4eWBhZCae3raKrve24hfi5C6DC4pMV843ganjzZktsAC8AqigQwecD1SsZh0UcfAfkDFrA3yySOsIK7dC2cJ_xuF3vWLQ5kcDPoPe65aRfzjKK/s1600-h/P1260016-1%25255B3%25255D.jpg"><img title="P1260016-1" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; float: left; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="P1260016-1" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhV2piBMJ1f7PRX4h17JuGywvdwCl6lA6aoKg52kXnwaj5qGH6TM797NXak9HrEjIcVUl6IFK6lNDFcrjOUaGmYeMssRUjeq74kvnwEe8TJJDPvswodlquInicjy5RBumaiz84DCRfmgqC4/?imgmax=800" width="130" align="left" height="244"></a>In true party tradition, we hoisted up a piñata (shaped like Pinkie Pie) and handed the kids an aluminum practice baseball bat to attack it with. Kids over six got a blindfold. I am sort of amused and sort of appalled by the fact that our piñata came with eight ribbon attached to the bottom and instructions for playing “the piñata game” – this involves pulling on the ribbons one at a time until one of them triggers the hidden trap door and the candy comes out. I understand that this is safer and less violent than hitting Pinkie Pie repeatedly with a bat, but then we would miss out on the savagery of young children. </p> <p>To wit: As we hoisted the piñata, seven year old Cups yells out “we’re all murdering pony beaters!” There were cheers from the child audience. Vicious attacks were employed with the blindfold or without. At one point there were half a dozen kids on the steps chanting “Kill. Kill. Kill.” When the hanger gave way (taking the mane with it), the last few kids brutalized the carcass on the ground anyway, just to get their hits in. And then, by the end of the party, in a move worthy of The Godfather, the kids got hold of the piñata’s remains, removed the head, and went running around with it. I think someone took it home, against his father’s wishes. </p> <p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgigDE0QGXds-OUXFOpRjPPU6ouWvLm5RVlCJeNQ9J5jVMV1Z8zZhIXe2MLLjqohjffLrNVQ03Pq3r-DCnoXKRao5SYuHOklCAQmVvyqwAlLY24MbPttT4YYr7_Pa4hdeOeestLVsu-Lw8j/s1600-h/P1250018%25255B3%25255D.jpg"><img title="P1250018" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; float: right; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="P1250018" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaX3bGKEg-Am5UruP7iVxXADwVf7pkV1iUBCZLzcpH9XtiwQo9TR-f7SSPXa9BNGIfN0eoM2LmwB_YDlmMXTX2fnicjQiMkHEL6UUNXLq2azatI2eJFmQY0xKQ7__1Py4I7l6zn5tegRdw/?imgmax=800" width="244" align="right" height="184"></a>I am unsure whether to be appalled or fascinated by this behavior, but it renders the imagery of <em>Lord of the Flies </em>at once more horrific and less distant. I can only hope that we can instill in Cups a strong moral code and an awareness of the difference between a piñata and another child.</p> <p><strong>The Cake: </strong></p> <p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsaiB5i4G12ftQDU0zdk0sg9KXpjcX33Ex8UV3eX1MH2vo4VtzIcwMy0143NSeim3_9eIlBo1schWSY69RyBrEYmHk0vTz8M278-2ttJ11hpVpd9mZ36iyCnuWX5Hi6dhvTdHTVcT7LL5l/s1600-h/P1250039%25255B3%25255D.jpg"><img title="P1250039" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; float: left; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="P1250039" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieNk5IpAkgzcYNy5FSCEqCmjOvoFJyDHnAG3kutWNVjtq6pFz8sf_6hQHmArOZzs_femSgAa1hj03egbrHEHNWw056quG0LsjcwJ9aLqbqP0IWJJYEvqlRAmbWPS3WTQVUSEPlTvCVxjgD/?imgmax=800" width="184" align="left" height="244"></a>We finished up with cake and ice cream and present opening, and I’m just putting this part in because I want to show off the cake. This is Rainbow Dash and the Sonic Rainboom. It’s done in marshmallow with a fondant pony and rainbow, and my amazing sister in law made it for us. This is the kind of birthday gift I can get behind.</p> <p>We had stipulated the party was going to last until 3, but we finished with cake and ice cream and presents around 2:30, so I told the kids to “go tear down the house”, which got a cheer and a stampede. They hit the basement, popped the remaining balloons, stuck tattoos to every exposed surface of their bodies, cut the elastic on one set of wings in half, dragged crepe paper through the whole place, and then ran in circles through the slalom until their parents dragged them away. We sent them home with their costumes, a coloring book (thank you Hasbro <a href="http://www.hasbro.com/play/browse//My-Little-Pony/_/N-6zZgtZkb/Ne-dz/Ntt-my%20little%20pony?Ntk=All">downloadables</a>), a whole lot of candy, and a decorated wooden pony. Also, in one case, a decapitated Pinkie Pie head. </p> <p><em>All in all, it was a success.<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_1anCIn5TyBJnIjkIn09159zpLfz71rG8NF9fpBi5dgp4D2BT28GRW36PItu_uEcNXsSTUIyxH3q6A8DH5p1B7bLoGIh_L_VrGOYw-yl2jTxF4tMjq38d4EWBDMooWb12M9iifpzodk00/s1600-h/P1250038%25255B3%25255D.jpg"><img title="P1250038" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; float: none; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-left: auto; border-left: 0px; display: block; padding-right: 0px; margin-right: auto" border="0" alt="P1250038" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFGrPVBlNL1R8fqtIspL4OZnTRZqQvEEoJoNqjUTMHKL2knivnGBYyYMnCU5G3I3OdlwLE84_C0-3JWpCJV3AkqWbcIOv38qxRRPM6JCyYADdm-aDTTNUuBt4rUOq9OYISj1dwxvTqBrkb/?imgmax=800" width="184" height="244"></a></em></p> <p align="center"><strong>Recipes:</strong></p> <p align="left"><em>Marshmallow Crème Fruit Dip: </em></p> <p align="left">Ingredients: <br>1 13 oz jar of marshmallow crème<br>2 8 oz packages of softened Neufchatel (<em>note: by softened we mean room temperature and attempting to ooze off your counter soft</em>). <br>Vanilla extract to taste (1-3 tsp, depending on how much you like vanilla)<br>Powdered sugar to taste (approximately 1/4 cup seems to do it)</p> <p align="left">To make: <br>Whip the cream cheese with a hand or stand mixer’s whisk attachment until fluffy. <em>Very important to achieve uniform fluffiness or lumps will remain.</em> Add marshmallow crème and whip it more. <em>Whip it real good.</em> While whipping, add sugar and vanilla. Taste. If not satisfied, add more vanilla and/or sugar. </p> <p align="left">Serve with fruit and a spoon. Keep out of reach of small children, unless you like it when your plates are attached to the wall. </p> <p align="center">~~~</p> <p align="left"><em>Magical Color-Changing Punch: </em></p> <p align="left">Indicator: <br>Chop half a head of red cabbage coarsely. Place in a mixture of 1 part sugar to 1 part water (volume as you choose). Boil until you like the color. Strain through a very fine strainer to remove cabbage. You should have a blue liquid. <br>This will change to a pinkish-red color in the presence of acid. Lemonade is your best bet for a drink. </p> <p align="left">Punch: <br>2 cans Welch’s Tropical Passion Fruit Juice Concentrate (sold in the non-frozen juice section)<br>1 46 ounce can of pineapple juice (this is a little shy of 1.5 liters if you measure that way)<br>45 ounces or so of pulp-free orange juice (we used half a “family sized” jug of Simply Orange)<br>4 liters of your favorite Lemon-Lime soda. </p> <p align="left"><em>You can, by adding equal parts indicator and punch, get a ruby grapefruit color to this. Only your kids will drink it at this point, and it smells of cabbage so buy noseplugs. And Beano. Just saying. </em></p> Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8603070020231253303.post-42170952308124885562013-08-19T22:23:00.001-04:002013-08-19T22:23:54.041-04:00With Great Power…<p>Friday morning at Games on Demand, I’m sorting dice out for a round of <em>Hollowpoint </em>and my first two players sit down. They’re a couple, looking fresh and well rested. There’s a Star Wars T-shirt involved. I give them my great big GM grin and say “Hi! Here for <em>Hollowpoint</em>?” </p> <p>“We sure are,” one of them says.</p> <p>“We’ve never done this before,” the other one says. </p> <p>“Never played Hollowpoint?” Most of my players have never played Hollowpoint, although some of them have read the book; occasionally a whole table or most of a table has read the book and that is what led yesterday to a demand to “Play it straight, like maybe Cold War era?” and some frantic Wikipedia searching before running an impromptu setting of <strong>Berlin: 1988</strong> in which the E Street Band was rescued from the Russians.</p> <p>( I love my players very much for bearing with me when I did not know off the top of my head that a Sig Sauer was a Swiss gun and entirely inappropriate for the KGB, and thank you to the substitution of a Makarov. You are what makes this game worth running. )</p> <p>“We’ve never played an RPG at all,” he says.</p> <p>“We’re tabletop virgins,” she says. They’re both wearing smiles on their faces and they look excited and they are sitting at my <em>Hollowpoint </em>table and inside my mind the <em>Imposter Syndrome</em> reel started running a countdown. Cue the sound of an LP going in reverse. </p> <p><em>Holy shit these folks are sitting at my table and they’ve never played a roleplaying game before and they want to play Hollowpoint. What are they going to </em>think<em>? </em>I almost asked them if they were sure they wanted to start here. Now. On Friday morning with me. On this particular game. Maybe they should grab a GM who was good at explaining things.</p> <p>And then I took a deep breath and told the <em>Imposter Syndrome </em>reel to <em>Fuck You.</em> And what I said was “You’re going to need some dice. About 5-10 six siders. I’ve got loaners if you need them. And a pencil. Which I also have if you need one.”</p> <p>They needed dice. I handed them a couple little boxes of spare dice. He complimented my dice. I complimented her shirt. We made small talk – they’re getting married soon and want to put some geekery in it; my sister in law made edible D6’s for my daughter’s birthday cake out of gummi bears which was awesome – and the table filled up around us. </p> <p>I handed out place cards. I asked if anyone had played <em>Hollowpoint. </em>Nobody had. I introduced the gaming newbies. I gave the ten-second talk on what roleplaying games are ("<em>When we were kids, we played games with other kids. I said ‘I shoot you’ and you said ‘No you didn’t, you missed’. Now we have dice to help us decide who misses</em>). I said “I will be helpful. I want you to understand this game. I will not be gentle. My job is to attempt to kill you. Repeatedly. Please don’t hesitate to ask for help.”</p> <p>Everyone laughed. I brought out the X-card as part of the introduction to <em>Hollowpoint: </em>“This is a game about doing bad things. There will be blood. There will be moral bankruptcy. There will be violent. If something is getting too intense or killing your action movie buzz, or if you just really hate spiders and the game isn’t fun with spiders, this is an X-card. Tap it or lift it, draw our attention to it. We’ll take out the spiders and go around the problem, no questions asked.” <em>No big deal. No pressure at all. Fuck you, That Girl GM Syndrome. </em></p> <p>I didn’t play it, but I brought it up again in character creation: “If you ask me ‘Hey Nykki, do we have pineapple grenades?’ I will say ‘I don’t know, do you have pineapple grenades?’ If you ask me ‘Hey Nykki, do we have flying dragons?’ I will X-card you.” Everyone laughed.</p> <p>I threw out a handful of settings, including last year’s Film Noir – Magic Kingdom, and that’s what they voted to play. I had a brief flash of <em>Imposter Syndrome</em> at that as well – here you are, and your first con game ever is a dark humor setup about a bloodbath in Disneyland – and then I remembered how well it had gone last year. How well it always goes. </p> <p>I have my <em>Hollowpoint</em> con game down to a pretty solid 90-minute run: I can add or subtract encounters as need be on the fly, but normally we get in four encounters and some skill checks, as well as some solid roleplaying, and hit the Principal scene at the 30 minute light flashing. The newbies, as Steve Segedy so aptly predicted during our warmup, were fantastic. It took them only a few minutes to get into the swing of things, and by the time Tinkerbell ditched them at a mud puddle in the woods (“Youse guys, you get inna throne room, you say ‘Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo’, I’ll be there. Bam. I’ll get you the money.”) there was no stopping them. </p> <p>We ended on time. Everyone was laughing. Ink was flowing (what, you expected blood from a Toon?) and the Magic Kingdom was saved. We wrapped up (“That’s Hollowpoint, everyone, at the IPR booth #1310 in the exhibit hall along with Many Other Awesome Indie Games) and I made sure to tell the newbies to come back and play something else. <em>Try them all! </em></p> <p>“We’ll be back,” she said. </p> <p>“Sure thing,” he said. </p> <p>It was a great game. I hope they came back. I didn’t get your names, anonymous couple who used the color of your markers for your character names and started a trend that went around the whole table, but thank you. Seriously. Because you made my GenCon a little more awesome. </p> Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8603070020231253303.post-59338500754454366832013-08-02T22:37:00.000-04:002013-08-02T22:43:08.997-04:00The X-CardThere's this really awesome idea that I first heard about from an interview with <a class="g-profile" href="http://plus.google.com/113002138553898786336" target="_blank">+John Stavropoulos</a>: the X-card.<br />
<br />
His explanation is probably the best, so I'll link to it (<a href="http://thisjustinfromgencon.geekyandgenki.com/this-just-in-from-clyde-an-interview-with-john-stavropoulos-of-nerdnyc/">linky!</a>) and just summarize it here: The X-card is left on the table as a go-to place for anyone in the game to use when content makes them uncomfortable. You just tap or lift the card, the group edits the content to get past or around whatever is problematic, and the game moves forward. John even includes a pretty awesome little intro speech (with choreography!) that you can use to introduce the X-cards into your game. <br />
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This year, for GenCon, I am saying a great big "I can't hear you" to my Imposter syndrome and volunteering as a GM for Games on Demand once again. I'm going to be offering two games: <a class="g-profile" href="http://plus.google.com/106477525564841896867" target="_blank">+Brad Murray</a> and <a class="g-profile" href="http://plus.google.com/112479634095405764652" target="_blank">+C. W. Marshall</a>'s spectacular <span style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://www.vsca.ca/Hollowpoint/">Hollowpoint</a></span>, which is a game about bad people killing bad people for bad reasons, and Magpie Games' <span style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://www.magpiegames.com/our-last-best-hope/">Our Last Best Hope</a></span>, which is a game about classic disaster movies, focusing on personal sacrifice in the face of overwhelming odds. <br />
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These are games (like <span style="font-style: italic;">every other roleplaying game I've ever played</span>) that have the potential to take a hard ninety-degree turn into the darkness. These are games where having an X-card is not only potentially beneficial but where it might be almost a necessity. I have GM'd <span style="font-style: italic;">Hollowpoint</span> with strangers before -- last year at GenCon -- with men and women and one older teenager with his parents. I didn't know about X-cards, but I knew about checking in with the table in advance, asking about language and "grown-up themes" and trying to watch my players. Even then, I encountered situations where I wasn't sure if we were still telling a story or if we were just trying to see who blinked first. <br />
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The problem is this: I'm a woman running a hyper-violent roleplaying game at a major gaming convention. (One day, I was a woman in a Buttercup costume running a hyper-violent roleplaying game at a major gaming convention). I'm constantly concerned that if I mess this game up, it's not going to be because I made a mistake: it's going to be because I'm a Girl GM. <br />
<br />
Yeah, this is that post about being a woman in a traditionally male-dominated enterprise. It's about feeling like I'm not representing just me -- because, really, nobody is going to remember my name if I screw up one two-hour gaming session -- but they're going to remember that That Girl GM couldn't keep her NPCs straight. They're going to remember that That Girl GM failed to deliver two hours of rollercoaster entertainment. And they're going to remember that That Girl GM threw the X-card.<br />
<br />
You see, John suggests that as the GM, you close out with <span style="font-weight: 600;">“…and usually I’m the one who ends up using the X card to protect myself from you all!” </span>and follow up by throwing the X-card on yourself early on. If it gets gory, or scary, or whatever, you laugh, and X-card yourself, to show it's no big deal. <br />
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I'm totally behind this concept -- as the GM, it's my responsibility to set the bar. When I GM a game I'm going to influence its tone, its pacing, and the direction of the plot -- even in GM-less games like <span style="font-style: italic;">Our Last Best Hope</span> it's my table, and that means something. I want everyone to be comfortable, and have an awesome time, and go away telling stories about all of the amazing things that happened at Nykki B's table. <br />
<br />
But when I'm throwing an X-card I'm afraid I'm not going to be Nykki B. I'm going to be Nykki B <span style="font-style: italic;">That Girl GM who couldn't cut it. </span>And that's exactly what I'm supposed to be preventing by setting the example, aren't I? I'm supposed to be the one who makes it no big deal. And John, he's awesome, but he's never going to be That Girl GM, and I don't know if I can explain what it feels like, being aware that what I do isn't just about me.<br />
<br />
It's just a con. It's a really big con that sells out the entire downtown hotel block of a major midwestern capital city, but it's just a con. And I'm just a GM and a woman and a gamer and a geek, and I'm not responsible for shouldering the entire con experience of women in gaming. <br />
<br />
So <span style="font-style: italic;">yes </span>I am going to bring the X-cards and I'm going to copy down all of John's awesome speech about using them, even the bit about protecting myself from my players, because <span style="font-style: italic;">fuck you imposter syndrome</span> I am a good GM and I owe the best game I can possibly run to my players. <br />
<br />
And I run a damn good game of <span style="font-style: italic;">Hollowpoint. </span>Even if sometimes it means I blink first.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8603070020231253303.post-54165320696409160552012-08-27T21:54:00.002-04:002012-08-27T21:54:28.058-04:00A Confession about GenConThis year, as Nykki mentioned in her previous <a href="http://geekthis.blogspot.com/2012/08/gencon-2012-nykki-gms-with-god.html">post</a>, we decided relatively last-minute to be GMs at Games on Demand through <a href="http://www.indiegamesexplosion.org/">Indie Games Explosion.</a>. Thursday night, I got there late because I was being chauffeur for our youngest, missing my scheduled block. I helped at the table for about an hour and then ran a session of Hollowpoint at 8.<br />
<br />
The next day, we got there for our 10 am sessions after running the youngest back to daycare. There's a line already out the door by the time we're there. I sorted out our prep materials when I heard Nykki calling over to me asking if I'm up for running <a href="http://www.dungeon-world.com/">Dungeon World</a>. I said sure, as apparently there were already multiple tables for it filling up.<i> </i>I grabbed my materials and head over to my assigned table, diving right into a game. I ended up running it for the rest of my sessions at GenCon.<br />
<br />
I loved how easily Dungeon World runs. I have played and run Dungeons and Dragons since high school in its various incarnations (2nd ed, Skills and Powers, 3.0, 3.5, 4.0, Pathfinder). I have a <i>lot</i> of experience in the genre, which I'm sure helped me out. Even so, the system and its inclusion of the players in the creation of the world really opened up new ways of playing. I have become enamored. That said, I have something of a confession to make.<br />
<br />
<i>Before my 10 am Friday session at GenCon, I had never run or played in a Dungeon World game.</i><br />
<br />
Even finding the system is a bit of a set of random circumstances. It all started from Nykki's Kickstarter trawling. To be fair, I don't think she just randomly searched for Kickstarters to back, yet there have been a number of them that I have no idea how she found. Sometime in the last year or so, we backed <a href="http://buriedwithoutceremony.com/monsterhearts/">Monsterhearts</a>. It's a RPG/story game about monsters in high school using the system from <a href="http://apocalypse-world.com/">Apocalypse World</a>. I think it was the setting that got us to back Monsterhearts, originally. The Kickstarter had finished, we'd gotten the softcover, and it was put up on the shelf with other small-publisher RPGs, likely to be read when one of us had the time.<br />
<br />
I am a PhD student. This leaves me with virtually no time for extra reading during the fall and spring semesters, but my summers are far less structured. At some point this summer, I decided to take a break from academic reading and pulled down some of the games. It took one read through of Monsterhearts and I was sold on the system. The group character gen, the far more spontaneous GM'ing, the ability for players to interact with the world in ways not done in D&D/Pathfinder; all of these fascinated me. However, we don't exactly have a very regular gaming group, so play-testing was likely not very likely. I put it on the list of games to run at the annual New Year's gaming party we go to, which is where we usually break in small-publisher systems.<br />
<br />
Meanwhile, several of the gamers in my G+ stream had been pushing this Kickstarter for Dungeon World. All I had seen on it was that it was "old school style and modern rules," but hadn't really explored what this "modern system" was. After I had read the Monsterhearts book and poked around a bit with the Apocalypse World site, one of these Dungeon World posts wandered by and something clicked in my head. I went poking around the Dungeon World site. <i>Oh, it's <b>that</b> system, </i>my brain thought. Boom. Kickstartered. And I started trolling the Dungeon World forums (discovering the dozens of different hacks out there).<br />
<br />
I had <i>no idea</i> how many games I might be called upon to run at GenCon, so I started prepping something in <i>every</i> system I had that wasn't 4.0 or Pathfinder: Hollowpoint, Homcidal Transients, Hollow Earth, Monsterhearts. Dungeon World was on the list I planned to prep, but I didn't have much of a scenario in mind (which is OK, since the book tells me not to prep too much for the first session). But I still hadn't played it or Monsterhearts.<br />
<br />
One night, the week before GenCon, our online weekly group offered to hold off on running our actual Pathfinder Adventure Path and I could run something. We ended up with Monsterhearts. I got them through character creation and about an hour or so of them role-playing home room before it was time for several of us to go to bed, due to it being Thursday night. But, I had a lot of good feedback on teaching the system and character creation (mostly: pre-gen them), so I thought I had a handle on the game/system.<br />
<br />
And then it was GenCon.<br />
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The players were all awesome. The groups worked well together. The biggest problem I ran into was keeping track of 6 players when there were 11 other tables running in the same room. (Which means that the biggest problem was the <i>success</i> of Games on Demand, so I'm not really complaining here.) There was such demand for Dungeon World that I would finish one game and I'd have a new table waiting in the wings. The system drew the players in very early in and there was very minimal need to explain the rules. The players very quickly got interested in what was going on, which in turn got <i>me</i> even more invested in the game. I'm glad I could get some exposure for this great game out into the gaming world. I am <i>very </i>pleased with the game and am eagerly awaiting the actual finalized book/pdf to show up.Matthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12300714202584895563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8603070020231253303.post-86127402632040468952012-08-25T21:22:00.001-04:002012-08-25T23:17:13.012-04:00GenCon 2012: Nykki GM’s with GoD<p>I don't remember who started it. </p> <p>Either Angel or I at some point said "Hey, why don't we run some games at GenCon this year with <a href="http://www.indiegamesexplosion.org/">Indie Games on Demand</a>?" And the other person said "Sure, that sounds like fun." So we emailed the Games on Demand folks (who are awesome), and after some back and forth we were given the opportunity to trade up to GM badges for running just 7 2-hour sessions each. In a fit of "We've got two whole days without the kids" we said <em>sure, why not</em>? </p> <p>About twenty-four hours later I realized that I'd just signed up to spend fourteen hours running games for people I'd never met before at a Gaming Con, and I nearly had a nervous breakdown. But I'd said I would do it, and I'm always super excited about running <a href="http://www.vsca.ca/Hollowpoint/">Hollowpoint</a>, and I had a pretty good handle on <a href="http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/97811/Homicidal-Transients">Homicidal Transients</a> (it's not a complicated system), so I buckled down and got to work dreaming up some scenarios that I thought I could play out in ninety minutes (reserving half an hour for character generation, rules explanation, and getting people rounded up). And all the while the <i>imposter syndrome</i> reel was playing out in my head: <i>What makes you think you're going to be any good at this? You’re not ready to deal with the jerk players who try to break things. Your narrative is going to fall flat. Do you <b>really</b> know the rules that well?</i></p> <p>I've been playing RPG's since I was rather awkwardly introduced to the concept with a D&D 2e Skills and Powers campaign in college (I was the awkward one), playing a twinked-out bow ranger with a pacifist hangup. I've run D&D from second ed through fourth and abandoned it for Pathfinder in mid-campaign, and my players always come back. I know in my mind that I'm a decent GM, or at least the kind of GM that gets repeat players – at least, in a fantasy setting with rules for everything that everyone has to look up that I've been playing for fifteen years. And the <i>imposter syndrome</i> reel continues to play.</p> <p>I've run fast-paced con-style games every year at a New Year's party we frequent, but it's in the company of friends and a number of folks who only game once a year, and it's always been <a href="http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/16537/Scared-Stiff%3A-The-B-Movie-Horror-RPG-Special-Limited-Edition?it=1">B-Movie</a>, (which qualifies as an Indie RPG in the small-publisher sense, but not so much in the "you can buy it and support small publisher" sense, since after I bought the game and three adventures in 2002 I've never seen another peep out of Guildhall Press ever). So I didn't feel like I could bring B-Movie, and the scenarios I use there really aren't the sort of thing I wanted to bring to a con. I've run Hollowpoint more than once before to general success – generally always with the same steampunk Western scenario, although once at a party in a drunken haze I did try to run a Star Wars ripoff that never got off the ground. </p> <p>Maybe it was just the memory of that Star Wars attempt that haunted me, but the <i>imposter syndrome</i> reel is a hard thing to ignore: it taints everything with hints of defeatism, and I probably had a hundred good ideas that never got past the "what if I..." phase before the voice-over cut in with "and then everyone will wonder how they got the Worst Game Ever". It took exhaustion and desperation combined with a particularly tedious work-related conference lecture after a night of hard drinking to shut the whole thing up long enough to whip out two simple Hollowpoint scenarios that I wrote down (in pen, in a notebook I was taking home) before they could get discarded too. I showed them to Angel, without telling him that I was pretty sure they were going to be the Worst Ideas Ever, and he started chuckling before I'd gotten past the first encounter.</p> <p>Hollowpoint is supposed to involve about half an hour of referee prep, and under normal circumstances that's about right; for me it involved two weeks of intense self-doubt and soul-searching followed by half an hour of referee prep and ten sessions of revising my referee prep until I wound up with exactly the same thing I started with. Also, I was growing steadily more terrified of running <i>this game</i> at <i>GenCon</i> for <i>total strangers</i> who were, I was completely convinced, going to think I was the Worst GM Ever. I had <i>dreams</i> about standing up in front of a group of players and forgetting how to play.</p> <p>I had dreams about being <i>That Girl GM</i>. I had dreams about having my qualifications challenged and I had dreams about coming to the table and being ignored and I had dreams about being the one who reinforces every stereotype someone has ever heard about women in gaming (I got into RPG's because of a boy, whom I later married). And the <i>imposter syndrome</i> reel, in the background, got nominated for an Oscar and I apologized to Steve from Indie Games for being late to the GM party and having to move the schedule (I made Angel write that note) because we couldn't both take a Saturday slot at the same time because <em>Someone Has to Watch the Kids</em>! And all the time I watched people around me on Google+ and Facebook and blogs talking about gaming and running games and getting excited while I was waiting – getting emotionally prepared – to fail.</p> <p><em>So what actually happened was this: </em></p> <p>We dropped our stuff off before Games on Demand opened at 10 am on Thursday and hung around until everyone showed up around 9:45 to get set up. In the meantime, we unpacked the whiteboard and made a lot of introductions and then played a game of Snapshot:1969, which I may talk about in more detail later, but which has some amazing art and was a lot of fun. Then we took off and did Con Stuff until Angel had to take off and do Kid Transport, shortly before my first session time. By this point I had found a set of Agency dice (little yellow dice, because asking for help makes you a Little Yellow Coward), lost my prep cards for my Homicidal Transients setup, frantically made backup plans for Homicidal Transients, talked myself out of reworking Hollowpoint yet again, walked around GenCon all by myself, and the <i>imposter syndrome</i> reel had me so nervous I was practically shaking. </p> <p>It didn't help that when Steve asked what I was prepared to run and I said "Hollowpoint or Homicidal Transients", I had the shortest list of games on the board. It didn't help that <i>some</i> GM's brought an entire list of gaming systems, complete with their cell phones and Twitter handles, and left sheets on the table in case folks wanted to get a pickup game together. It didn't help that there was a line halfway out the door by a quarter to game time. </p> <p>What did help was that when I unabashedly admitted to a woman I'd just met standing behind the table that I was terrified, she said "You're going to be fine. It's lots of fun." What <em>really</em> helped was that I told my first group that I'd never GM'd at a convention before and got "That's okay, we've never played at a convention before" from at least three members of the group. And then I started talking, and we started rolling dice, and wild over-the-top ideas started coming out of people's mouths, and it was Hollowpoint just like it always has been, only this time it was fedoras and Mouseketeers with Tommy guns and a power-hungry tyrant instead of steam-powered flying horses and railroad trains and the Johnson Gang. </p> <p>Hollowpoint was up for three ENnies this year, and some people came looking to play specifically. Some people just showed up to see what games they could get into. Every Hollowpoint table was full, even when I expanded them to five people solid instead of "four, maybe five". Everyone seemed to be having fun. And somewhere on Friday, between the moments where I was frantically making up answers to questions I hadn't expected and inventing complications to take on players who ignored blatant hints in order to go their own way, I forgot about being afraid. </p> <p>I gave out coupons for discounts at the <a href="http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/">Indie Press Revolution</a> booth. I stopped by IPR – an acronym which makes me think of PBR, and gaming hipsters, and wonder if you can play RPG's ironically – and watched the stack of Hollowpoint books slowly getting shorter and shorter. And then, Saturday afternoon as I was weaving through a line of prospective players that stretched halfway through the elevators (amazing success for Games on Demand!), I was stopped by a frantically waving man. "I have to tell you!" He was obviously excited about something, and I recognized him from Friday's table, so I waited. "We are <i>still talking</i> about your game! That was so awesome!"</p> <p><em>How much better can it possibly get?</em></p> Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8603070020231253303.post-89338841755520268092012-03-13T22:08:00.001-04:002012-03-13T22:08:49.260-04:00Geeklets: LEGO Travel Adventures<a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/Mn0i8u-TYBqHNZdw-HZSHC3cIVnb42j-A_lVHllx2jU?feat=embedwebsite"><img style="display: inline; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px" title="All kinds of Legos!" alt="All kinds of Legos!" align="left" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt_ghqbAJNNQ5mIfaBdjYtcfozc67-QxMs3sdnepJMlOEG7aISOd6htbwveKGt_hPzoKnc1UEbZcUiQ3x4Q_nhiaGlAXo7WQd8tKg41oq7NdU7TfSszhY9RMYScN5H3Z73GxDwrJL3SQ_7/s288/P3094776.JPG" width="240" height="183"></a> <p>We had an opportunity recently to give our local Children's Museum money – not very much, about the price of a night at the movie theater, with popcorn – in exchange for a special Donor Preview Night at their newest exhibit. This just so happened to be <a href="http://www.childrensmuseum.org/lego-travel-adventure-release">Lego Travel Adventures</a>, which was an immediate Must-See for both Cups and Daddy, so we ponied up our movie admission and headed out for "Family friendly hors d'oeuvres" and a sneak peek at the exhibit. <p>I'd never been to a Donor Preview Event before, but we did go the night $childrens_hospital rented out the museum from 6-9 PM for all of their referring docs and office staff, and that was pretty bruisingly fun, so we were definitely looking forward to it. Cups was looking forward to it for an entire week, and the car ride was almost intolerable: at some point when she chirruped "I'm so excited!" I shot back with <p>"And you just can't hide it?" Never teach a five-year-old to sing 80's hits, even in jest. Try as I might, I couldn't get her to wrap her head around the rest of the lyrics. The rest of the ride was one-line 80's hit night. <p>Our Children's Museum is a really nice place and they know how to throw a party, including an open wine and beer bar, which is really vitally important when you are shepherding excitable kids through a Lego exhibit between 6:30 and 9 PM. For the eats there were ciabatta pizza rectangles and fried raviolis and vegetable skewers and ice cream bars and brightly colored Jello rectangles, and the tables all had little frosted glass candle holders full of Legos on them so we could build while we ate. It was all themed in primary colors and rectangles. <a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/j-MlJIDLsjg2nBnpgMDNdi3cIVnb42j-A_lVHllx2jU?feat=embedwebsite"><img style="display: inline; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px" title="Our Lego dinner tower" alt="Our Lego dinner tower" align="right" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgv1xn7tlfLpxhTKVEMEymFzd3esyQAPJaiP_DZggoD3fUnhcO9uUPRv2VJ95l2VxK8YbaWNeZEc46E3LqIzg0zVKx6PPDbbhOQC1yKyB636DKAOQ8vc01Gk9pINaCYNeYrEXtRjtybWhXW/s288/P3094761.JPG" width="183" height="240"></a> <p>Just to emphasize how excited Cups was, she built a tower instead of eating her pizza and then scarfed it down in ten seconds flat when told there would be no more Legos until she finished her dinner. And then, three bites into an ice cream bar, she abandoned it to run upstairs to check out the exhibit. <em>Let me repeat that</em>: Cups handed me a quarter-eaten ice cream bar and said "I'm done. Now for the Legos." <p>I am an old-school Lego Maniac: the kind where there were rectangle pieces and flat pieces and square pieces and wheels. I am bewildered by all the specialized bits that have come out of the modernization of Legos, and at the same time very excited about angles and slopes and things. Cups, on the other hand, has always been able to build dinosaurs and Jeeps and languished over the untouchable Vader lurking over Daddy's study desk. It's just the way Legos <em>are</em> for her. <p>The exhibit was subdivided: there were Duplo cars to build and race (and a Lego racecar big enough to sit in!) as well as some of the larger building blocks, the kind big enough to build playhouses out of, out among some glass-enclosed model cases with clever themes like "San Francisco" and "Paris". There were also some interactive computer displays for creating virtual models. <a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/vCHDWn2Ze5SNA5fDeLL54C3cIVnb42j-A_lVHllx2jU?feat=embedwebsite"><img style="display: inline; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px" title="Cap'n, either building or preparing to eat." alt="Cap'n, either building or preparing to eat." align="left" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuXM1IOAWAD6LzN_DTC7xC0T3faioq00O7Ut_og5ZufI1ICyBNKUUshamlKkXymxfde0tT20fJzsyyJpxLJt_S6Q9xi9A-hAY13p3rAXgi1QUCInAKns3vSbNKNTDpcBfjWtcv1E9wAdJF/s288/P3094763.JPG" width="240" height="183"></a> <p>Cap'n quickly got bored after a few runs of the Duplo car down the track, since he was explicitly banned from either eating it or from sliding himself down in lieu of a wheeled construct, so he and Daddy headed over to one of the other exhibits, which left Cups and I to enter the Building Area. I am certain that when this particular exhibit is open to the general public that the Building Area will be shoulder-deep in kids, and there will not be room enough to build a two-block tower, let alone the "dream vehicle" they encourage you to make. But at the Donor Preview there was room, and Cups shouldered her way up to the build tables. <p>They were big flat areas to build on with buckets full of disembodied Lego parts, mixed and matched from all the sets. Scattered over the tables were partially assembled Frankenfigures and half-constructed walls. Cups grabbed a partial body and started assembling. It just so happened that the majority of the minifigs on the table were from the Lego Friends set: you know, the <s>creepy</s> friendly new “For Girls” Legos. They have a size advantage over the original minifigs, as well as being leggier and arm-ier, so maybe that’s why all the kids were building with them, but it was still sort of satisfying. Cups grabbed a head and a torso and legs and about six different hairs before she found one she liked (blonde, like her), and put a little pink crown on the top of it, and held it up to me. "This is Princess Leia, Mom." <p><em>All of the pink in the whole world was forgiven in that moment. <a href="http://www.childrensmuseum.org/creative_media/lego/images/image20120309192251889.jpg"><img style="display: inline; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px" title="Cups, Princess Leia, and the Air Vehicle" alt="Cups, Princess Leia, and the Air Vehicle" align="right" src="http://www.childrensmuseum.org/creative_media/lego/images/image20120309192251889.jpg" width="240" height="151"></a></em> <p>Princess Leia had a minimalist spaceship, and a dog, and a console, and we headed over to make a greenscreen copy of it to email to Friends and Family. I wouldn't call the greenscreen camera a quality lens, but we did render the picture you see here, including Cups with the very strange face, and sent it to ourselves. And then Princess Leia flew around the volcano for a bit before stopping to let her dog out, and we headed off to more Fun and Adventure. <p>Really, there isn't much to a Lego Exhibit except the bits where they show you the awesome stuff people have built and the bits where you get to make your own awesome stuff, but for the Donor Preview the Children's Museum also roped in some other activities. <a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/r9DahlM0cf-2KnleiEKCUy3cIVnb42j-A_lVHllx2jU?feat=embedwebsite"><img style="display: inline; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px" title="Cups with Master Builder Steve Gerling" alt="Cups with Master Builder Steve Gerling" align="left" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJAc75LVjL7IZ9KDPQNa54oOspNSRHNbb6tqgIiHTN03w4M2IHUXozZ50a8ca-5coagpGpp2NmCXeUHAWZGjXMWyjsUkU5SXFbEiSGtrwo6ydhZY0FjHvkR54wWlDN1Xvm9aTLgsFZq92p/s288/P3094800.JPG" width="240" height="183"></a> <p>One was the Master Build, where a Lego Master Builder was working with all comers to generate a huge Space Shuttle model (hint: if you ever want to do something that's fabulously tedious, get a bunch of kids to do it a little bit at a time), and another was the Girl Scouts, and their <a href="http://www.firstlegoleague.org/">First Lego League</a> entry. <p>I was a Girl Scout once. I quit because my troop was interested in fashion shows and manicures and etiquette lessions, while I was interested in snakes and computers and science fiction books. I wish that there had been something like First Lego League in my troop, because I would have loved getting involved in robotics, and I think First Lego League goes about it the right way: they target kids of all stripes, rather than dressing their event up in pink and calling it "for Girls". And then they make it fun. The Girl Scouts couldn't stop fiddling with their machine, showing off tasks, correcting each other. They couldn't stop talking about what they were doing. <p>I stopped to chat. We talked about Lego Friends, and the marketing of Legos to girls, and the Girl Scouts volunteered that they didn't <a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/ZZ78qHW2XHDA-fkJiLf0Ei3cIVnb42j-A_lVHllx2jU?feat=embedwebsite"><img style="display: inline; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px" align="right" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2q_PdhQZeni2v22fpkzhQTavf86zQ7qtYqYkYbM-Qoz6E5gc-gWr6nS5Q6bWqKJ3spvRxl49CBEuLdez5aFuw79Ul2SXGWRsHOBclQg5vWI005xpbsCwig9geANizl-PfMTg2St3UoKTX/s288/P3094766.JPG" width="183" height="240"></a>particularly want pink Legos, because the ones they had worked just fine. We talked about First Lego League, and snakes, and about being part of a team and making something; we talked a little bit about engineering and science in a roundabout way, but it was clear to me that the competition wasn't about being Girls in Science to these Girl Scouts. It was about making something really cool. <p>That's how I would like science (and, incidentally, Legos) to be marketed to Cups: I'd like it to be as easy and natural as showing girls having fun in the photo array on the top of the First Lego League webpage. I'd like it to be something that girls do because it looks like a lot of fun, and not because someone tied a pink ribbon on it or made it sparkle. I'd like to stop playing into the divisive ideal that there are "kids" and there are "girls", because that becomes down the line that there are "people" and there are "women", and leads to some people's accomplishments being prefaced with "female" as if somehow being a "female engineer" is a different thing than being an "engineer". And that leads to people sitting in think tanks asking how to market Legos to girls, when girls were already playing with them. <p>Cups knows how. So do the Girl Scouts I met the other night. And so does Princess Leia in her minimalist <s>spaceship</s> air vehicle. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8603070020231253303.post-73129092176495316362012-03-03T20:15:00.000-05:002012-03-03T20:15:18.448-05:00Never Board: Discworld:Ankh-Morpork<div align="left">
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<i>I don’t know if you noticed, Albert, but that was a pune, or play on words. — Death, “Hogfather”</i></div>
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I am one of those people who reads fanfiction only if my friends insist on it, and generally even the best of it is met with a cringing heart. I am nervous about film adaptations of anything that I have loved, and I feel the same way about board games. In my experience, once something has become big enough to spawn spinoffs into other genres, those spinoffs tend to fall flat. Games especially tend to be either so complex in their efforts to replicate the “feel” of the work that even thinking about playing them is a chore (I’m looking at you, <i>Battlestar Galactica</i>), or they have largely irrelevant gameplay designed as a backdrop to “Here’s your favorite characters once again” (Hello, <i>Star Wars Trouble, Anything-Opoly, Trivial Pursuit Extremely Specialized Nerd Edition, </i>and <i>Risk: with New Characters</i>).</div>
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I wanted to be excited about <a href="http://www.treefroggames.com/collectors-edition">Discworld:Ankh-Morpork</a>, if only because Sir Terry Pratchett has produced a consistently fascinating and varied world with so much stuff in it that I’m never bored with it. But I was wary – very wary – because getting my hopes up meant risking having them crushed. I put it on the <strike>Christmas</strike> Hogswatch list, which is really the best way of getting things that you think you want but are afraid you don’t, and it showed up under the tree in short order. We broke it out for a two-person game shortly thereafter, and I am happy to say that <i>this</i> game spinoff delivers.<br />
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<b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvRkIZuNlDJf96fPV3bJtry3oZ98h_6ENmv5TY9YRCGUE4FN7lQlSGglOL3XG5URMdLNRsM46TUJc_f7j1vJjYIPqDwphLsqthQiTRq04QXpDz2gIyHv-Jxwcqt5To_WKEvwhzq4NDXgTN/s1600-h/image%25255B4%25255D.png"><img align="left" alt="Discworld Game Box" border="0" height="249" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeiLvDRSOAaE8GQnMiwpke7CIQXMeqIhmw4c83DpgTN6fpyOkF-21dcyyySC9ztaYRCqO24mM7P0np-VDaJ1MglrH0dClBnhPhYNqkgwdvWStlLClxXoCxGu6sROlpcKRRSfGssz-aaRjE/?imgmax=800" style="background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; display: inline; float: left; margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" title="Discworld:Ankh-Morpork Cover" width="235" /></a>What’s in the box: </b>The instruction booklet is a slender eight-page folio that lays out the rules in a clear and concise manner; the majority of its space is devoted to making sure you know what all of the cards do and how they affect gameplay. It’s illustrated with examples and accompanied by a set of “cheat sheets", one for each player, that reiterate the meanings of the card symbols, the win conditions for each personality (so important!) and the functions of each city area. Between these two references I have yet to have an unanswered question.<br />
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The gameboard itself is a map of Ankh-Morpork, subdivided into twelve regions that will be familiar to anyone who’s spent much time reading Pratchett’s books; the pieces are sturdy cardboard coins and wooden tokens (the Hogfather did not spring for the deluxe resin pieces for me). There are also a <i>lot </i>of cards. I would have liked the map to maybe have a bit more color variation: the sepia toned palette is very pretty and very thematic but it does take some looking at times to find the distinctions between regions. On the other hand, it is <i>very</i> pretty and not at all garish.<br />
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I’d like to take a moment to address the designers of the packaging: this is an injection-molded plastic insert in a large cardboard box, so the actual design of the plastic insert should in theory be infinitely variable. The package designers chose to make three card deck-sized slots (one with a divot in the middle that is sized to hide the die) and one large featureless rectangle to contain all of the other pieces. I can deal with fitting the five different decks of cards into three slots (three are very small), but this game contains six houses and twelve minions in each of four different colors, four demon and three troll pawns, and twelve trouble tokens. It also contains a bunch of cardboard coins. It would have been nice to try to design the box to allow these to be separated at least a little bit. As it is: get some snack-sized zipper bags or you will be sorting forever.<br />
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<b>Gameplay: </b><i>Discworld:Ankh-Morpork</i> is a game about the constant power plays of Ankh-Morpork’s city politics, and about getting on top of the dung heap for just a moment. To start the game each player draws at random, an identity which determines that player’s conditions for winning the game. The three Lords (Selachii, Rust, and de Worde) are trying to control territory; Chrysoprase is trying to raise $50 in cash and property; Lord Vetinari wants to get his spies into everyone else’s business; Dragon King of Arms is causing trouble; and Vimes just wants everyone else to run out of options. Your personality (and therefore your win conditions) are known only to you, so a very important part of the game is trying to guess who’s trying to win and how – while trying to conceal your plans from everyone else.<br />
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The game starts with one minion for each player and one trouble token on the board in three separate areas. How it goes from there is entirely up to the players themselves. On your turn, the first thing you do is check to see if you’ve won – all win conditions except Vimes take place at the <i>beginning</i> of your turn – and then you choose a card from your hand, play it, and follow the instructions on the card. When you’re done, you refill your hand back up to five and play passes to the next player. That’s the whole game in a nutshell.<br />
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The actual <i>gameplay</i> is considerably more complex: each card has from 0 to 4 symbols along the top of the card, which tell you both what you may do and what order you may do it in (yes, 0 symbols mean that <i>The Peeled Nuts</i> is a useless card). With the exception of the Random Event symbol, executing any action is optional, but you cannot go back – you must play from left to right. There are symbols to place a minion in or adjacent to an area where you already have one (if there is already a minion there, you must also place a trouble token and potentially inch Dragon King of Arms closer to his win condition). There are symbols to remove someone else’s minion from any area where there is a trouble token (also removing the trouble token). There are symbols to remove just a trouble token from the board. There are symbols that let you get paid, interrupt play, and play another card. There are symbols that let you buy property in an area where you have minions, as long as there are no trouble tokens there. And then there are the Random Events.<br />
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There are actually two decks of cards that combine to form the draw pile: the first half are green-bordered and the second half are brown-bordered. Initially, this seemed like a needless complexity to me, but after playing several games it became clear that this allows the game to proceed naturally from a setup phase to a strategic phase. Most of the green-bordered cards deal with placing minions, buildings, and trouble tokens (and getting paid). With the exception of Rincewind (count on Rincewind to be in the wrong place) there are no Random Event symbols in the green deck. Once the cards move to the brown deck, there is a lot more moving minions around, whether through assassination or actually moving the tokens, and more manipulation of the board in general. There are also several other members of the Unseen University faculty in the deck, and every wizard comes with a Random Event.<br />
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I have yet to be benefitted by a Random Event: they’re generally bad things that affect players at random, so they can come back to haunt you – things like fire, flood, demons, trolls and dragon attacks. They destroy minions or buildings or place blocking tokens around the board, which can seriously sabotage even the best-laid plans. They’re best saved for a desperation move, and once you’ve played a few times you see why you don’t get the option to skip a random event. <br />
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Buying property allows you to use the special properties of that particular region: some give you money, some allow you to place or remove trouble tokens, some allow you to buy extra minion placements, some allow you to discard cards. Additionally, a building counts just like a minion for determining who’s in control of a region; very important for Lords Selachii, Rust, and DeWorde. I’ve found that the money-earning properties go quickly for everyone (who doesn’t want more money in Ankh-Morpork?) but that there are advantages to each, and none of them are really useless.<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9FKqnrXp4DY5FyK2pvqpPwftrkQLZl2wOmOHRpgimo6vjXjNE_NwS_oMP25Fane59dE-ZMlClS8EzKEfmEtKvyF38aLXtI0IKEnas84BAJR8D3angwfnLU8TKehHwMqeQNufAbtx_2TQI/s1600-h/PC314636%25255B4%25255D.jpg"><img align="right" alt="Ankh-Morpork Gameboard, Game in Progress" border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4QaWdYLPodg4uScp-Xf6NwKoNLeY8t24hv9G9fQ-9g01teqywpCdmUnCqYWa-IbXnOsVjwhTRgiEvIar1wTa5m2aQk37mY-WHRIUTcdK8sGUK09V28B5h5kTrfuDLLIFsocpSkSpxoKM9/?imgmax=800" style="background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; display: inline; float: right; margin: 10px 0px 0px 10px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" title="I wish I could tell you who's winning :)" width="240" /></a><br />
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<b>Winning: </b>The first player to start his or her turn with their win condition on the board wins. Alternatively, if you’re Vimes, you win as soon as the deck runs out of cards. If nobody is Vimes and nobody else wins by the time the deck runs out, then there is a point system to determine who the winner is. We’ve had to use it once, but under most circumstances someone either gets lucky or careless or both. It’s <i>hard</i> when you have four people going to keep track of how many areas everyone controls, how many trouble tokens are on the board, how many minions are where, and how much everyone’s cash and property is worth. And all the while the draw pile is dwindling as cards like Leonard of Quirm allow a draw-4 and owning Unreal Estate lets you draw and discard an extra card a turn. <br />
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<b>Overall Impressions:</b> It’s hard to find a good board game for two people, and since Cap’n just eats the pieces and Cups is still in the <i>Star Wars Trouble </i>age range, we’re condemned to two-person games for now. <i>Discworld:Ankh-Morpork</i> delivers on the two-person front with interesting gameplay that doesn’t suffer from being scaled down, and the changing winning conditions and strategy involved give it great replayability. <br />
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We took it to a game session over the holidays and got some of our friends involved as well, including some folks who’d never heard of Sir Terry Pratchett. I’m happy to say that you don’t have to be familiar with the <i>Discworld</i> series to enjoy the game, and while the cards are hilarious if you know the characters involved, they’re still funny if you don’t. Expanding to four players turns an interesting strategic battle into a game that requires your full attention. It’s just complex enough with four players that everyone’s going to miss <i>something</i>, which means everyone has a chance to win. <br />
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It’s extremely satisfying as the winner to start your turn off by saying “And I win”; there’s a tension involved in wondering if you’ve accounted for everything that keeps it fresh. We played – and played again – and played again, and at least one of our newcomers left saying “I’ve got to go read these books,” which is the best of all possible tributes I can think of. <br />
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<i>Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a city to infiltrate. </i>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8603070020231253303.post-62995273076889622612012-01-22T15:22:00.001-05:002012-01-22T15:22:56.354-05:00Everybody’s Doing it: GM Questionnaire<p>Zach S. over at <a href="http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2012/01/gm-questionnaire.html">Playing D&D with Porn Stars</a> posted a GM questionnaire that we thought it might be fun to answer in tandem. So Matt will take the plain text and <em>Nykki</em> will take the italics, and we’ll see what happens. <p><strong>1. If you had to pick a single invention in a game you were most proud of what would it be? </strong><br><em></em></p> <p><em>It’s not an invention, per se, but I’m pretty proud of the Meadow. There’s something about knowing that experienced parties will go hundreds of miles out of their way to avoid a prairieland that is immensely satisfying. </em></p> <p>For my case, I think I would have to pick something that required a lot of player participation to pull off. I got one of our players to play a lawful good cleric of the sun god in my world. The campaign revolved around demonic influences in his church. I got Nykki to play a spy (half-demon) following the party on their journey. The players did most of the actual implementation, and each played their part brilliantly. The half-demon needed to eat a sentient being once a week, mostly as a balance requirement (Since she was following the LG cleric, this means she had to keep it hidden.) Months into the campaign, the party did not suspect that she was the cause of the terror that would pop up every time they stopped somewhere. Theories ranged from “she’s a werewolf” to “she is being stalked.” In the end, at the great reveal, she had managed to get the LG cleric to promise to protect her <strong>before</strong> she told him she killed his wife (which happened in the first session). I did the setup for it, but it really played out so well because of my players, so I suppose I can’t claim all the credit.</p> <p><em>I don’t know – I think your greatest accomplishment was as a player, when you rallied the goblins to follow your halfling and turned him into a god. You invented a whole religion that time.</em></p> <p>Well, yes, I am proud of that one, too. The Lightning-bringer will yet raise up the goblins to join civil society!</p> <p><strong>2. When was the last time you GMed?</strong> <p><em>Since we had to cancel the last session of my campaign due to player emergencies? New Year’s Eve.</em><br>Last night, actually. <p><strong>3. When was the last time you played?</strong> <p><em>Last night, actually.<br></em>Night before last, in the Homicidal Transients hangout. <p><strong>4. Give us a one-sentence pitch for an adventure you haven't run but would like to.</strong> <p>Have you seen the brief TV series <em>Jericho</em>? I have a modern (or perhaps Victorian Era Steampunk) game based basically around being members of a small town who witness the nuclear destruction of virtually every major city (US in modern, Europe in Victorian Steampunk). Originally, I was thinking of using the nWOD Mage system, the characters awakening all at once as the bombs go off. If I did Victorian Steampunk, I’d likely run it in the Hollow Earth/Ubiquity system. <p><em>That’s not one sentence. </em> <p>Details. Then just stick with “Have you seen the brief TV series <em>Jericho</em>?” if you’re going to get technical with me. <p><em>Mine: The king is dead, and the army is gone. It’s up to the common folk to decide: will you be heroes or slaves?</em> <p><strong>5. What do you do while you wait for players to do things?</strong> <p><em>Look up rules, sometimes – try to get my monsters statted up. Browse the news if it is getting particularly long. Write down what they’re saying.</em> <p>Prod my players to do things. Recap what happened. If it’s an online game, I skim news/blogs. <p><strong>6. What, if anything, do you eat while you play?</strong> <p>With live sessions, it varies a lot, really depending on what was brought. Whoever’s place we’re at has usually provided lunch/dinner. There’s not really one snack “just” for gaming. <br><em>I haven’t got anything to add. </em> <p><strong>7. Do you find GMing physically exhausting? </strong> <p><em>Physically? Not except that we sometimes stay up ridiculously late. Mentally, it’s sometimes a battle.</em> <p>Not really. I tend to end up energized, usually, afterwards. Unless we’re up super late. <p><strong>8. What was the last interesting (to you, anyway) thing you remember a PC you were running doing?</strong> <p><em>I have a character in the current party who has some dragon blood and breathes acid. He tends to do this without regard for who is in the splash zone. He took out 2 of the 3 NPC escorts in the current dungeon singlehandedly. Almost a shame it was too dark to tell at the time.</em> <p>One of the more amusing incidents involved what was supposed to be a fairly tough fight with a dragon. There was a halfling fighter in the party out to prove that halflings were not all sneaky thieves, but could be actual fighters. He had engaged the dragon in some verbal banter before we got to Initiative. Then, he beat the dragon on init when combat started. His action? Set his spear against a charge and use his racial <em>Taunt</em> ability to make the dragon charge him. Despite what physics might have said, the dragon impaled itself, taking massive amounts of damage in the process. I am uncertain if it one-shot killed it or just really wounded it, but either way it took a lot of chutzpah. <p><strong>9. Do your players take your serious setting and make it unserious? Vice versa? Neither?</strong> <p><em>My players, and my settings, are kind of a mix: we have high drama and total ludicrosity in varying amounts. I have had good luck with keeping my serious games mostly serious and my light games fluffy. </em> <p>My players have always known when it is time for High Drama and when they can be silly. While I have had some players that were on the loonier side of things, they almost never interrupted something serious happening. While my long term games tend to be Serious Business, my one-shots and shorter adventures tend to move quickly in silly-territory. <p><strong>10. What do you do with goblins?</strong> <p>I talk circles around them until either they give up and start stabbing me or give up and do what I was trying to tell them to do. This is how my halfling wizard got the goblins to follow a Chaotic Good religion (focused around him, but, well, these things start somewhere). <p><em>As a GM, I have organized all of the traditionally Chaotic Small races into a hierarchy of the Small, which starts with Kobolds as the kings of the Small and ends with goblins and hobgoblins as the Least of the Small. This means, of course, that since kobolds are so naturally superior that they have to follow all the rules of anyone in the Small who is taller than them. Goblins only have to follow goblin rules. <br>Goblins also have a complex family and societal tribal structure, which involves a rule of retribution by ten’s: if you defeat a goblin and his family learns of it, his ten nearest relatives are obligated to come and take revenge for his death. Parties usually figure out that not killing all of the goblins is a bad idea about the second combat.</em> <p><strong>11. What was the last non-RPG thing you saw that you converted into game material (background, setting, trap, etc.)?</strong> <p><em>New Year’s: game system is RPG-13 (B-Movie); this year I borrowed characters from Firefly and Star Trek and put them on a spaceship with a homicidal Siri-9000 computer. Hilarity ensued.</em> <p>Not sure here. Several of my names for characters come from languages that I’m studying (I’m a PhD student). I’ve an idea for a game based off <em>Jericho</em>. I don’t always trace where some of my ideas come from, so I’m sure there’s something in my current game that wasn’t lifted whole-hog from a “game” source. <p><strong>12. What's the funniest table moment you can remember right now?</strong> <p>The New Year’s game I ran this year was <em>Hollowpoint</em> in your Standard Fantasy RPG-World. The first group I ran through created Sesame Street-inspired characters. Yeah, and it wasn’t that late at night yet. <p><em>B-Movie a few years back: I was a lazy GM and just rolled up stats for the pregen characters without paying attention to what they actually <u>were</u>. As a result the Stoner wound up with a Clumsiness of 4. B-Movie requires you to roll <u>over</u> your flaw on 2d6 to accomplish anything, while the opponent needs to roll under or equal to. The setting was every Evil Dead inspired movie ever, and as the zombie hordes (attack penalty of 2) rolled in, the Stoner got the munchies. The climactic final battle took place with a spatula at the grill in between burger flips. The stoner won. </em> <p><strong>13. What was the last game book you looked at--aside from things you referenced in a game--why were you looking at it?</strong> <p><em>Jade Regent: Brinewall Legacy. I’m planning to run an online campaign for some friends, and we’re going to work off of that adventure path. If we’re talking about things I am not running at all, then it was probably <u>Toypocalypse</u>, which I am scanning over because I hear it’s fun.</em> <p>The last book I read was <em>Homicidal Transients</em>, which is short. It’s an interesting satire of the fantasy-adventurer trope in RPGs. (Though, at first glance, it looks like you’re playing mentally disturbed hobos.) If you count things I’ve been flipping through for character gen, it might be also <em>Ultimate Magic</em>. <p><strong>14. Who's your idea of the perfect RPG illustrator?</strong> <p>I’m afraid I don’t know many current RPG illustrators. At least, not by name.<br><em>Stumped here, sorry.</em> <p><strong>15. Does your game ever make your players genuinely afraid? </strong> <p><em>Good question. I think I’ve creeped them out a few times (vampire kittens, little girls in faux distress) but I don’t know about genuinely afraid…although apparently my GladOS voice one year had players treading very very carefully.</em> <p>I know I have disturbed them. (Fountain in the castle of the villian, shaped like a hero pierced with spears, water flowing from the wounds. The water was iron-heavy and tinted itself and the statue red.) As far as scared? I don’t know, I’d have to poll my players. <p><strong>16. What was the best time you ever had running an adventure you didn't write? (If ever)</strong> <p>I’m not sure here, as I usually run my own adventures. There have been a few times we intended to run a pre-made, but I’m not sure it stayed on the rails well enough or if we ever actually got started. <p><em>D&D 3rd edition came with a little intro adventure. I has a group of tipsy college roleplayers who wanted to run through it. It didn’t stay on the rails, but we had a blast storming the castle.</em> <p><strong>17. What would be the ideal physical set up to run a game in?</strong> <p><em>No budget constraints? I want a GeekChic table with a Surface built into it for maps so we don’t ever have to set up or tear down or draw out the dungeon. I want it to have its own room, with a sound system. I need wifi; I can’t GM effectively without a computer any more. I want big comfy chairs.</em> <p>See above. Also, with a separate (but monitored) room for the kids to play in while we game. <p><em>Oh, yeah. Kids.</em> <p><strong>18. If you had to think of the two most disparate games or game products that you like what would they be?</strong> <p>The two most disparate games… I think might be anything White Wolf (where RP is Serious Business) and HOL (Human Occupied Landfill – you play convicts sentenced to a planet of garbage). <p><em>B-movie is sort of the bottom of the barrel when it comes to serious, as noted above; I would probably contrast that with Vampire, where I once made an angst-resistant Toreador and almost got booted out of the game for it. I’m with Matt on the White Wolf stuff, especially the LARPing. </em> <p><strong>19. If you had to think of the most disparate influences overall on your game, what would they be?</strong> <p>As for influences, I suspect they would be things from my schoolwork (Ancient Israel, Assyria, Babylon, Egypt) and modern TV series. I’m pretty sure bits of everything get merged together, as I tend to put my players (and my characters) into moral dilemmas that I don’t have a clear answer for either. The dilemmas tend to come from anywhere, though, source wise. <p> <em>I come from a long line of draft-dodging hippies, which has definitely influenced my game world and the societal structure therein – there’s a lot of puzzle and conflict resolution. On the other end of the spectrum, I’m fascinated by human psychology, and I love turning the “good guys” into homicidal agents of evil. I find it very interesting to watch the interplay when you have a good roleplayer or two with an evil character in a party.</em> <p><strong>20. As a GM, what kind of player do you want at your table?</strong> <p><em>I want players who are there for the story and the interactions; people who understand that not all rewards are tangible. I want folks who are willing to let the rules be bent on occasion, but who understand what kind of occasion that is. I want people who also realize that real life sometimes trumps the best of plans. I want people who blue book and let me watch, who write character journals and session summaries so I don’t have to.</em> <p>I want players who are invested in the story we’re creating. While I want them to remember it’s a game and they should be having fun, I want players who are completely fine with, say, selling their souls to a demoness to free their friends or loading up on everything explosive the party has and jumping into the mouth of a dragon. So, I want them to respect the story we’re trying to tell while at the same time being all right with taking things a bit less-than-seriously. <p><em>Okay, the explosives-into-the-mouth-of-a-dragon was an awesome player moment, I will grant that. I just don’t want them getting the idea that’s the <u>best</u> way to beat a dragon.</em> <p><strong>21. What's a real life experience you've translated into game terms?</strong> <p>The one that comes to mind for me would be having a character go through becoming a father. While I’m not sure how close his experience and mine were (I didn’t have healing magic to help my wife give birth), I would like to think my own experiences at becoming a father informed how I approached it with my character. <p><em>I would have liked healing magic. That would have been extra cool. For me, I don’t know that I’ve taken a lot of real life experiences to game terms – other than Matt and I always having to negotiate our characters’ relationships beforehand.</em> <p> And that doesn’t always mean “are we already lovers/married.” Since our characters usually end up allying with each other, we have to establish how they know each other already: are they siblings, friends, what have you. And then we have to work out where we think things will go. <p><strong>22. Is there an RPG product that you wish existed but doesn't?</strong> <p>Beyond an affordable Microsoft Surface table? I’d like a way to use my xBox’s fancy Kinect and the TV it’s attached to for remote gaming. More of my “table top” sessions are ending up in the computer these days, so I’d like to use the technology we have to do cool things. <p><em>I’m with that. Also: I want dice that you can roll physically on a table that transmit the rolls to a computer server/program. There’s something about dice – physical dice – that I just can’t give up (it’s like books), but the more Internet resources we use for gaming the more we rely on virtual dice. It’s so unsatisfying.</em> <p><strong>23. Is there anyone you know who you talk about RPGs with who doesn't play? How do those conversations go?</strong> <p><em>Everyone in my profession? Once in residency I embarrassedly confessed to an orthopedic surgeon that for Father’s Day I got our D&D group together as a present to Matt. He got so excited: “You play D&D?!?!” We had a great time ever after. Most of the time, though, I just have gotten the reputation for being a nerd: my office staff all thinks cosplaying and gaming tournaments are sort of cute. My teenage patients can relate, though.</em> <p>I don’t have much chance to, sadly. While at school I don’t often have time to talk much gaming, though there are a few fellow students who are nerds with me. Most of that conversation revolves around Dr. Who and other sources, though. Gaming conversations, when they do happen, are usually brief and go well enough. </p> Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8603070020231253303.post-75450762632585104532012-01-21T14:12:00.001-05:002012-01-21T14:44:39.501-05:00Gaming for Grownups: Homicidal Transients<p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUc-iD_81kB8kvz5X64vZ0ekkPK3BN_sBROH_uLk_eVxN94CbfKJ0gCWdeP_3tTSZL6Sm5LVGNpEGXjokc12j4HUBXrDhMMJE-w2UMefdnepYbEhIHmpp26Ms8uoa3vtHSsj4pDCtECiDI/s1600-h/image%25255B2%25255D.png"><img style="background-image: none; border-right-width: 0px; margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: inline; float: left; border-top-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px" title="image" border="0" alt="image" align="left" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgHFzF4UgZC_uwX7zkjIZQs-bOuaQvVrvXbQuI-S34OXSolCWIcx4FAP8kBlwpebgsdiVEIdPpN1OYGiTzVVSPpGqSWltbFPxmvoPrHdUxogK31GwShmtJ5OHeVL6rkvd9AVEjU6QpOxCH/?imgmax=800" width="244" height="155"></a>We backed a Kickstarter a while ago for a new little RPG called <em><a href="http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=97811">Homicidal Transients</a></em>. Despite a name that seems designed to engender a sort of shocked and somewhat self-conscious amusement, the premise is heroic fantasy roleplaying distilled down to its finest and most basic element: You and your friends are roaming the countryside, killing people to get stuff. The actual setting of this really doesn’t matter. While the game as it’s flavored lends itself to a “railroad barons and dust bowls” sort of feel, there’s nothing laid down to say that’s how it has to be. </p> <p>I’d flipped through the game rules (13 pages, including table of contents and acknowledgments) a few times, trying to piece things together on my own. The layout is fantastic: all sticky notes and index cards, with headings like “Watch out this stuff will eat you” and “Who the hell are ya?”. The text is sparse but adequate to explain the effects of skills and abilities; there’s no wasted fluff talking about how to think or how to play in <em>Homicidal Transients.</em> This is a game made for people who know all about roleplaying games and have played enough of them to recognize a certain basic symmetry. </p> <p>I frequently refer to myself as “having a steep learning curve” with regard to rules: after playing D&D for years I am still frequently out-lawyered by my players, and I regard all new systems with a certain trepidation. I flipped through the rules, and back through the rules, and I <em>thought</em> I had a feel for how to make my character, but I really didn’t feel very confident about it. The rules are terse and self-explanatory, but for someone accustomed to the “Pick race. Roll stats. Pick Class. Pick Select X items from Y skills” chapters on character generation, it felt like there ought to be something else that I was doing – something I was yet missing. </p> <p>Turns out, I had it all right, right off the bat. Characters, like the rules, like the game itself, are distilled versions of Ye Olde Hero – so there’s really not much to them. There’s your Homicide style, which is the specialized way you kill things; there’s your Transient style, which is the specialized way you interact with everything not immediately capable of being killed. One of them is primary – either you are a killer or a talker – which determines the order in which you are going to receive bonuses to your abilities. There’s your Health, which is always at full at the beginning of combat, and then there are your skills. There are no random stats in <em>Homicidal Transients</em>; everything is reduced to the skill list, which reads like a list of everything that most adventurers do in any case: Drudge (for when you need muscle), Impetus, Talky Bits, Tamper, and Scrounge. </p> <p>Once I actually <em>made</em> a character, the creation process crystallized, but it is not quite intuitively obvious from the rules as they stand how to put everything together. I understand the principle behind the way <em>Homicidal Transients</em> is arranged: it strips out all of the “how to roleplay” fluff and limits itself to just the rules. It just doesn’t work for me as well as I think it could. The biggest help for me in clarifying this would have been a character sheet, which would make the simplicity of the design just a little more evident. During last night’s game, I <a href="http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=98702">mocked one up</a> which met with Creator Miles’s approval, so hopefully that will help with future newcomers to <em>Homicidal Transients</em>.</p> <p>We live in the middle of nowhere, so getting a gaming group together for playtesting is always a difficulty affair. Fortunately, as part of the <a href="http://www.newyearnewgame.com/">New Year, New Game</a> initiative, Creator Miles hosted a game over Google Hangouts and we had a chance to participate. Despite an issue with my sound drivers which resulted in me only hearing about half of the game, we had a great time. </p> <p><strong>Gameplay</strong> – another thing I wasn’t certain I understood – is as simple as it sounds. You use one die (any size, as long as everyone has the same size) and roll, add half your level (round down) and any bonuses. Your opponent does likewise. High roll wins. Ties go to the defender. Uncontested rolls are against a target, difficulty anywhere between “Very Easy” and “Very Hard”. The mechanics are simple enough to stay out of the way of the narrative, which is really what it’s about anyway.</p> <p>Speaking of narrative, it went a little something like this:</p> <p>In a fantasy world – no, wait,the height of the Dust Bowl – no wait, someone said Sweeney Todd, let’s do neo-Victorian (“I can totally rock those fingerless gloves”), three (and occasionally four) raggedy semi-protagonists escaped from a factory and wound up on the docks in front of a would-be press gang. After a little discussion, mainly involving the name of the press gang’s employer so as to know where we could find work, we went at the other gang with broken two-by-four and stolen knife and hobo stick. By the end of the combat we had one dead transient (that would be me, forgetting to Defend), a name, a plan for getting some money and stuff, a set of goggles (+1 Scrounge!) and a couple of eyeballs on a stick (“That’s a proper Mangle, that is”). </p> <p>We picked up the only mostly-dead transient (“You get one pass”); the goggles went to Matt, who was a Bum Slayer type and therefore good at Scrounging, and off we went to find Frank the press gang leader and get a job as shanghai artists. Along the way, we encountered a toff in nice shoes but no cane and no cape, by which we were to know he was only <em>sort</em> of a rich toff. He offered us a job. This engendered some more discussion, seeing as how the words “Job” and “Transient” are somewhat exclusive in nature, but it was finally decided that as long as it was an <em>odd</em> job that we would be willing. </p> <p>It was a very odd job indeed. We were sent to find Tom, who was not at his home, and return with either the man or – failing that – with proof of his demise. We started at his home, despite – or perhaps because – he was not going to be there, which is where we Scrounged up a diary. There was some discussion at that point about whether or not we could, in fact, read at all (“We’re transients! Who needs to read?” “You can if you want to be able to…”) which resulted in everyone looking at the guy in the goggles. “He’s got glasses. He can read. That only makes sense.” </p> <p>So the Professor read the diary, which told us that there were two choices for what to do next: go seek out the pirates that Tom had traveled with, or go to the library. <em>That </em>led to basically no discussion at all; off we went to see the pirates. They didn’t know where Tom was, but they knew where he’d been: here and there and everywhere with the pirate captain, all around the world. <em>Forget Tom. Let’s be <u>pirates</u>. </em>It appealed to the homicidal and to the transient among us. Problem was, the pirates weren’t hiring, not even if we killed off three of the less-necessary crew members. Not even if we killed off three of the more-necessary crew members. </p> <p>We went off to the library, instead. They <em>also</em> didn’t know where Tom was, but they <em>did</em> have his collection – which we couldn’t see. And they wouldn’t tell us anything at all, really, and as we were facing off against some kind of library sub-administrator with bloody 2x4 and eyeball on a stick and resurrected knife-bearing Slaughter Grifter, someone mentioned “You know, we really haven’t done any homicide lately.”</p> <p>There wasn’t much stuff to be gained by killing the sub-administrator, so the conversation naturally drifted back to pirating. <em>See the worl</em>d, they said. <em>Kill people and take their stuff</em>, they said. It really did feel like an occupation custom-designed for a bunch of homicidal transients. It was decided that the best way to get around the hiring freeze on pirates was to kill some extra pirates and take their ship, then press gang ourselves a crew. </p> <p>It was unfortunately about this point when real life attacked: midnight in the Midwest combined with gamers who have kids (I told you it was terrible, getting older) meant the subsequent carnage will have to remain in the strictly theoretical realm. Despite the shortened session, we had a good group and great fun. </p> <p><strong>Overall impression</strong>: This is a streamlined system that, despite the surface appearance, is fairly setting-agnostic. The game rules could be easily adapted from trains and hobo camps to almost any locale, with minimal changes in the names of things. It’s all about paring down roleplaying to its roots: killing things, getting stuff, and moving on. </p> <p>The rules are completely free of fluff and laid out in a nonstandard fashion, which makes them a little intimidating at first read and can lead to some confusion about their implementation. Don’t give this book to someone who isn’t very familiar with roleplaying games – it’s not for beginners. In stark contrast to initial impressions, though, actually <em>playing </em>the rules was intuitive, and there was little to no interruption of gameplay for clarifying questions. This is a game that is, in its current format, best understood by just grabbing some dice and playing.</p> <p>It is also a portable RPG that could be played, for example, in the ludicrously long will-call lines at your Favorite Gaming Con. The core rules cover only five pages of the PDF (the rest is setting, bestiary, and loot suggestions); your character will fit on a sticky note (I made six character sheets on a page, comfortably); and the group could make do with just one die if need be. Character generation is quick and painless – no rolling up stats, no purchasing gear – and leveling is by GM fiat, which is just the way I like it. </p> <p>In short, this is a game for when half your gaming group bails on you, or for when you’re sitting around drinking and get the urge to roll dice (this is always a dangerous combination), or – as was decided last night – if you’re running a bit of a fever but it’s not quite high enough to see purple elephants. It’s quick and brutal and pared down to the barest bones: not a system that I would want in a campaign, but a lot of explosively violent fun on its own merits. </p> Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8603070020231253303.post-60866351241897988882012-01-16T20:27:00.001-05:002012-01-16T20:27:31.137-05:00Gaming with Kids: Pathfinder Beginner Box<p>When we were in college, gaming was a sprawling affair – sometimes in the lounge of the dorms, sometimes crowded onto someone’s floor – that started late and ended early, sometimes only when the players could no longer keep their eyes open. These days, that seems to be around midnight on a good day, and setting up a map for adventures requires some advance planning and a height advantage, lest children spawn and rearrange the minis in the middle of combat. </p> <p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlVpfp7gbfRqBIdAPziFDvcvZPI0-S36AD3r3e1woOrphgSKPl0kVerFuhl-T6aYmA9g_AF0cvo4KoUTXSDtgaRIFQS8WoILDWm4s8rZTRq-TsuLFSA5VXlsuI810DSV-UkWR3_QMWpBKS/s1600-h/Pathfinder%252520Beginner%252520Box%25255B5%25255D.jpg"><img style="background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: inline; float: left; border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px" title="Pathfinder Beginner Box" border="0" alt="GM Daddy and Cups, with the flip mat laid out for combat." align="left" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgXk1LaSey8DtryZA_uL8hSARq-dJV3VNEJhRne1zNM85vOAd-f-CsMvTLMw0_9v1M6pGfcONFtLISIO_gJsXcknx-BVMZgwdZnGhIGjPQUF63BgMDhH8gLTmdIRy9HHTjjb5tIUbIGZuo/?imgmax=800" width="240" height="180"></a>Cap’n is young enough that there’s no malice in him and short enough that he can only just reach the tops of tables, but Cups is at that curious age around five when she wants to be part of what the grownups are doing, but only if they play by her rules. Most of the time, one or more of the other gamer kids is along to distract her, but not always. We’ve sat her down and told her it was a grownup game. We’ve banished her up the stairs (she can’t get over the baby gate) to her playroom. We’ve told her she can watch, but only if she’s quiet – but there’s something about a five-year-old observer that stifles my party members’ creativity. </p> <p>And then someone linked a video of a very proud gamer dad and his three-year-old daughter with the <a href="http://paizo.com/beginnerbox">Pathfinder Beginner Box</a>, and we had the germs of an idea. Cups is bright (isn’t everyone’s child?) and knows her numbers; she has a collection of dice all her own from GenCon; she can read small words and sound out larger ones. <em>Why not let her play a bit, so she knows what we’re doing?</em></p> <p>Cups likes to have things to hold when she plays, so that she can visualize what’s going on. In a game like Pathfinder, where normally everything is written on paper, this could prove difficult – except that I had purchased a moderately large quantity of <a href="http://paizo.com/gameMastery/itemPacks">Paizo’s Item Cards</a> as a Black Friday binge. We haven’t used them in our real games yet. mostly because I hadn’t gotten them organized enough to use them in my sparse pre-game planning, but they seemed just the thing to help Cups out. </p> <p><em>For those who aren’t familiar: the Item Cards are system agnostic (but generally medieval fantasy-themed) cards with a picture of an item on one side and some flavor text on the back, along with space to make your own notes if you can get over your fear of writing on the cards, which I have not yet done. They come in regular and Shiny! Foil! Collectible! varieties, because everyone is jumping on the CCG bandwagon, but they are overall very pretty and have nice little descriptions on them.</em></p> <p>We found a night when there was no school the next day and got Cap’n to bed while Cups and I went through the contents of the Beginner Box. It’s a nice set, and contains everything you need to run your very first Pathfinder game: a full set of polyhedral dice; a game mat with one blank gridded side to draw on and one side with a classic dungeon laid out for the playing; a players’ guide (“Hero’s Handbook”) that starts with a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure-style adventure to introduce the game, and continues with character gen and the basic Pathfinder rules; a GM’s guide with a premade adventure to play out either by yourself or with a group, as well as a number of other useful rules, magic items, and monsters; character sheets both blank and premade; and a whole bunch of tokens to serve as your miniatures. </p> <p>As two experienced players and GM’s I’ll admit that the spouse and I skimmed over the player’s guide, and Cups is just at the Gerald and Piggy stage of reading, so I can’t give a novice view of the books. What I <em>can</em> tell you is that the books are well-organized and written for readability (I scored some sample passages between grades 7 and 10), with a useful index and explanations of all the common esoteria of gaming-speak. Most of the book is character generation and combat rules, but there’s a discussion of roleplaying and it’s not just about the numbers. The GM’s guide has information on building cities and towns and mentions roleplaying encounters on a par with combat encounters. And then there’s the adventure.</p> <p>We used the pregenerated characters from the box (Fighter, Wizard, Rogue, Cleric) with no modifications whatsoever. Cups picked first. I read her the information on the front of each sheet – “Play this character if you’d like to be good at…” – and she picked the Rogue (“I want to be sneaky!”). Following the rules of good party building, I took the Cleric and the spouse did double duty as a Fighter. </p> <p>Character sheets are coded to match with the Hero’s Handbook, so that you can quickly reference where things go (“B” is ability scores, “D” is skills, etc). The premade sheets are double folios with explanations and combat references out to the sides; the standard sheets are double sided with space for character history, monsters killed, and most damage dealt (for the budding munchkins) on the back. They’re not quite laid out like the traditional sheets, but it didn’t take long to pin down where everything was located.</p> <p>We sorted through the cardstock miniatures, which are really quite sturdy, and found the minis corresponding to our characters. Paizo thoughtfully provided generic miniatures for the pregens, as well as for each race/class/gender combination (your race options are Human/Elf/Dwarf), and the art is actually a step up from the usual fantasy drivel. I was gratified to note that all of the fighters are suitably clothed, and the majority of the female characters are not showing an excessive amount of skin. We set them up on the flip mat as instructed and GM Daddy got the party started, straight out of the provided adventure.</p> <p>Some basic setup and party sticky are provided, including the party’s motivations for getting to the dungeon in question, before the game really starts. There’s no mucking around in taverns trying to get your roleplaying feet here: the adventure runs on rails right through the first encounter. The GM is instructed not to let anyone go through the moss curtain, and the first combat comes with no alternatives. It’s clearly designed to be an introduction to the game mechanics, and as such it works very well indeed. </p> <p>Our novice roleplayer didn’t know the difference, and she certainly wasn’t quite certain what she was supposed to do, but the concept of “what would your character do” proved surprisingly easy for her to grasp. We got some basic roleplaying of the “Hi, how are you” variety done before getting jumped by goblins, and then it got into the number fun.</p> <p>Playing a dice-based RPG means that there will be math to do. We tried to keep it simple, and thankfully at first level there aren’t a lot of strange bonuses, but Cups only has ten fingers – even if she <em>can</em> count to a hundred. At first she tried recycling her fingers to add up roll + attack bonus, and then took to laying out dice pips to help her with her math. It wasn’t fast, but we wanted to make sure she did the things she wanted to do. It wasn’t until halfway through the adventure that we hit on the idea of skipping the math and just telling her what number she needed to roll to hit the monsters, which sped up combat immensely.</p> <p>Paizo as a general rule puts out quality adventure products that allow for quite a lot of GM and player flexibility, and the introductory adventure didn’t disappoint. There was a little more linearity and a little less choice than in a full-fledged adventure module, but for beginners (and five-year-old heroes) too much choice can spoil the fun. But there were options: parlay instead of combat; which door to choose; how to approach the boss at the end. </p> <p>We made a decision at the beginning at the adventure that we didn’t really want to have Cups involved in killing creatures – she is a softhearted thing and I don’t really want her adopting the kill-or-be-killed ethos so often seen in high fantasy games – so at the terminal blow, all of the monsters puffed away into blue smoke. It wasn’t a perfect solution, but it was akin to turning down the gore settings, and it made us feel a bit better. We needn’t have worried. After a couple of combats, she took her first turn to run away. “I’m afraid of spiders.” </p> <p>Game stop. Cups is not much into creepy crawlies, so we explained to her that these were just pretend spiders, not real ones. She shook her head. “I’m not afraid of spiders. I’m playing a character who is afraid of them. She’s running away.”</p> <p><em>Don’t you want to help the others?</em> “No.” <em>Why not?</em> “I don’t like fighting.” <em>So much for worrying about Cups absorbing a violent mindset.</em> </p> <p>We talked for a while, but not about fighting. We talked about teamwork and cooperative games, and how when you are playing with other people they depend on you to help them out. We asked her if she thought she could maybe play a character who would help her friends when they were in trouble. She thought about that for a while, and then agreed. “But I don’t want to fight all the time.”</p> <p>As it happened, the next encounter was open to parlay, which GM Daddy and Rogue Cups did a very nice job of. She negotiated with skill, and only a little prompting; we left happy goblins behind us and brought a happy Cups to the final boss battle. </p> <p>There is a warning to the GM regarding the battle: “Black Fang is a very deadly foe. He can easy reduce PC’s hit points below 0 with just a few attacks. You should be very careful when running this encounter.” <em>It should have read something more like:</em> “Black Fang is a very deadly foe. Do not allow the rogue to flank him and roll a critical hit with the special weapon provided elsewhere in the dungeon, whose main purpose is to assist the party in defeating Black Fang.” He lasted three rounds.</p> <p>During cleanup, GM Daddy handed out treasure. Cups wanted to count the coins in the hoard (indicated by a circle on the map). “You count for a long time, because there are six hundred of them.”</p> <p>Cups stared at the map, and reached for a dry-erase marker. “I’m going to draw a bigger circle.”</p> <p><strong>Verdict: </strong>A nicely put-together box of introductory gaming tools. The cardboard minis may be a boon to even experienced players (you can never have too many skeletons). <em>If you’re going to spend $35 on the box just for the minis, though, I might recommend checking out Inkwell Ideas’ Kickstarter for </em><a href="http://kck.st/tnUJgO"><em>Monster Stand-Ins</em></a><em> instead. </em> The included dice are nice – if basic – and a gaming group with no supplies at all could share them and play.</p> <p>Using the loot cards for Cups was a good idea: it let her keep our party loot list and she liked being able to trade weapons when the opportunity arose. I’m still not sure how much I’ll use them in my regular game, but there are some ideas brewing. And they are very pretty indeed, especially the Shiny! Foil! Collectible! ones.</p> <p>As far as gameplay goes, the game is Pathfinder streamlined: the rules aren’t any different, but there are fewer choices to overwhelm the new player (most notably in the spells). My five-year old didn’t really understand flanking and flat-footed, but she loved rolling a bunch of dice. We had a blast, and Cups is already asking when we can play again. I think next time we’ll try letting her make her own character.</p> Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8603070020231253303.post-38736173753085438262012-01-01T20:22:00.002-05:002012-01-01T20:22:59.939-05:00Fantastic Adventures in Hollowpoint<br />
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At the annual New Year's Eve Eve
role-playing party, I ran Hollowpoint. This particular party has been
going on for over a couple decades now, and the spouse and I have
been attending for over a decade. December 30, we meet for RPGs of
all colors and sizes and usually run it con-style these years: GMs
prepare a short (~4 hour) adventure and characters if the system
requires any sort of elaborate character gen. Then the players are
divvied up among the GMs and then circulate, with some of the GMs
swapping in and out as needed. When we were young, we might have
managed 3-4 sessions a night (starting around 6-7 pm) but these days
we usually manage two, maybe three if one of the GMs is feeling
punchy and not quite unconscious.</div>
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This year, as I said, I ran Hollowpoint
using a very basic skin. I set it in a Forgotten Realms type fantasy
RPG setting. Rather than reskin the skills, I had each player pick a
fantasy character archetype (Fighter, Paladin, Wizard, Rogue, etc.)
and then their skills related to the abilities that archetype might
typically have (Kill for a Fighter might be a greatsword, for the
Rogue, poisons and daggers, for the Wizard, fireballs, etc.). The
characters were all adventurers with the Agency, which contracted
with clients to resolve problems they were having.</div>
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The mission for both session I ran was
that the Town of Northhaven had contracted with the Agency to deal
with a necromancer who had moved in, started robbing the local
graveyard, and caused zombies to show up and attack the town.</div>
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The first session went off the rails
the instant I had them name their characters. The first person to
speak named his character Elmo and immediately adopted the
appropriate voice. The others all jumped on this and soon I had Elmo
the kleptomaniac rogue, Snufalupagus the dual-wielding warrior,
Charlie the sneaking Rogue, and Big Bird the Bard. (Later, after
Charlie bought it, the Count joined us as the undercover agent.)</div>
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When we got to town, I also realized
this was the Agency you only called once. (This theme carried over to
the second group as well.) The mayor led the party into the Inn where
they were getting rooms and introduced him to Larry, the town drunk
who first saw the zombies. What was supposed to be a simple conflict
with the NPCs trying to Con the party into leaving immediately to
deal with the issue, culminated with Snuffy slamming her swords into
the bar and demanding an ale, Big Bird singing completely random
campfire songs in order to confuse everyone, and Elmo bodily throwing
poor Larry along the bar into cellar and announcing that “Everyone
needs to get in the *$*% basement or lose a *%&*$ ear.”</div>
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Leaving the mayor and the others locked
in the cellar of the Inn, the party leaves and encounters a cadre of
zombies wandering into down at sunset. After briefly considering
luring the zombies into the Inn (and setting it on fire), they
decided they would likely not get paid if the mayor died in the
conflagration. So, instead, they took the bells off the door into the
Inn and Elmo strung them onto the zombies. Meanwhile, Charlie found
most of his long-lost family among the zombies (his Complication),
Snuffy started mowing some of them down, and Big Bird played Pied
Piper and led them into Town Hall. Which was promptly locked and set
on fire. Just before the building burned down and the last of the
zombies bought it, they opened the door and let the few remaining
ones out, which started immediately retreating toward the
necromancer's home, bells ringing along the way. (See? The bells were
not completely random...)</div>
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Arriving at the necromancer's tomb,
they were met with a mess of skeletons setting up palisade and a
Death Knight (Snuffy's newly raised father, her Complication)
leading. Meanwhile, there are yet more relatives of Charlie among
these undead and the undead that come streaming out of the tomb in
retaliation. The party handles the Death Knight and his minions well
enough, Big Bird continuing her ongoing attempts to confuse the
enemies with random camp song lyrics. Charlie does succumb to the
onslaught of the undead retaliation to be replaced with the Count,
who has been serving as an undercover operative in the necromancer's
army.</div>
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The party descends into the tomb and
there encounters the flesh golem (Frankenstein's monster for the
non-D&D'ers). However they also see the necromancer disappearing
into a door at the far end, yelling about having to give chase or
save the mayor's son. At this point, they see the mayor's son hanging
by a quickly dissolving rope over a vat of acid (the conflict's
Catch).</div>
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Combat ensues, with Big Bird's
continued Con assaulting the monster while Elmo rigs his security
blanket (a Trait) into a lasso and saves the boy, just before the
rope snaps. The monster ends up with whatever was left of it's brain
fried into dysfunction by the ever sung lyrics.</div>
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Beginning the final confrontation with
the necromancer, the party marches into his laboratory. He is busy
casting a really bad-ass spell (Cool) while his collection of ghosts
turn their Terrorizing assault on the party. Elmo begins randomly
Taking vials and bottles from the necromancer's lab and mixing them
together, before throwing them at the ghosts. Snuffy is in her usual
bladed fury and Big Bird continues her aural assault. The party
eventually slays the necromancer and his ghosts and the muppets
return home to their well-earned money.</div>
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The second session of the evening fared
a little worse. Rather than homicidal muppets, this party consisted
of a necromancer (a former colleague of the enemy one), his grave
robber, his “corpse creation specialist” assassin, a pair of
rogues and a warrior. (I think, this session started at something
like 11 pm, so it's a bit more fuzzy for me.)
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The plot progressed through a similar
set of scenes, though this group manged to kill everyone in the inn
without really getting information out of them. (Though the party's
necromancer raised them all, so they still had what they needed, I
guess...) They also simply slaughtered the zombies that came in,
rather try to corral them. Of course, their necromancer then raised
the newly re-corpsed into their own growing army.</div>
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This was the groups modus operandi for
the night: kill everything and then make it into their own undead.
The necromancer then used his own in-conflict successes to have his
army soak hits for the others as needed (Agent special ability).
There were two fatalities in this one, one being replaced with a
cleric, the other with a similar rogue (as I recall). The cleric used
Turn Undead (Terror) quite efficiently.</div>
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Overall, Hollowpoint worked well for
this one-shot style of fantasy RPG, however the trappings of the
genre hindered it a bit. A good number of my players were used to
D&D, Pathfinder, etc. and the weight those games place on
spending much time crafting a well balanced character and careful
resource management during an adventure. Since characters (and thus
their Traits) are supposed to be expendable, my veteran RPG players
were slightly less willing to embrace spending often and freely,
until the final combat. This left some of them feeling a little
frustrated early on, as even in their best skills they could not
match the length of runs I as GM would manage. This cleared up as
they began to realize that making a new character was not the time
sink it would have been in D&D/Pathfinder. Additionally, I had to
overcome my own reluctance to assault the weakest player in each
round. However, after the first round or two in each session, play
began moving much more freely. Everyone certainly seemed to enjoy the
free-form chaos that ensued.</div>Matthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12300714202584895563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8603070020231253303.post-72996082042005749052011-12-02T23:48:00.001-05:002011-12-02T23:48:20.685-05:00Self-Rescuing Princess: Disneyland<p> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCJYA7-KaNkk9fPCedrb2vQGoodJMz-Wvtq7lkDpwI8t7QwrpqNJl4wR3xCsWYn5dPRXPKs0camEQFo1orf_0DnwL6f72ZQpJFNjRk-chS7asAqK8gQeyGuJCK9lKb_xPPvORpPSRdpJJV/s1600-h/PB153003%25255B5%25255D.jpg"><img style="border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; margin-left: 0px; border-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; border-right: 0px" title="Sleeping Beauty's Castle, Holiday Edition" border="0" alt="Sleeping Beauty's Castle, Holiday Edition" align="left" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnGV2VrwK-m-SwirWOsCmCFvNqr8SDS9n_-Z-RxgHfTwv0elSXuOhvxV76YJjwE6O3sbnERfSvLhjLPbp82-STC2z0Ezq0pJJS9C8EmMh8TH9X1EqM1BmD42p34PXStBRpMsn6r6GpPVL4/?imgmax=800" width="244" height="184"></a>We were headed to California anyway: there was this conference in San Francisco. And it happened a lot like it does in the commercials: There was one night where one of us said “come look at this,” and the other one said “that’s not too bad…we can do that” and then there was a lot of sorting through websites and looking at plans and discounts and things like that. And the long and the short of it was: we were going to Disneyland with nearly-five-year-old Cups and one-year-old Cap’n. In mid-November. <em>Which, editorially, is quite possibly the best time to go. Ever.</em></p> <p>It has been recommended to me that when one is traveling with children to make sure there is “cushion” time on both ends of the flight – time for the little ones to adjust and recuperate. It is probably <em>not</em> recommended to board a plane at 6 AM EST, get off the plane at 9:30 AM Disneyland time, and be in the park for a full day one hour later<em>. For the record, Cap’n slept on the plane and both kids were model citizens.</em> </p> <p>We arrived at our hotel at about 10 AM or so Disneyland time. Cups, whose planned highlight of the California trip was a visit to see <a href="http://www.calacademy.org/webcams/penguins/wordpress/?p=37">Pierre the Penguin</a> at the California Academy of Sciences, had been telling everyone along the way all about the story of Pierre (look it up, it’s pretty awesome). So when we got out of the taxi and unloaded our stuff, I turned to her and asked her “Do you want to go to Disneyland?”</p> <p>“Naah,” she said, “Maybe another day.” <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilmSA_yEDkAtNvdv9T4qs_9BxIjRJd7g_e_9txBQB1PdxoKL1yYBVozDikuzvWWxVmqr3TBxqwjEUymxByKYC12MoK3LR1x9jrECJRC0fw7InlNJSrUuMQ4TI08jHPpLhAox8acdJlf6TG/s1600-h/PB152901%25255B7%25255D.jpg"><img style="border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; margin-left: 0px; border-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; border-right: 0px" title="PB152901" border="0" alt="PB152901" align="right" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjafpekNNvQOx71MKIoQp3RufzDwQdMPh29a5pq02wwMXNZPnPjSVwZ70Do_0IUmRLCOcbJthj2Yk4KXHInjW8aURtFRcCUn4Zpq3o2ap7a34cbwpFkhBHdgEod9_DAuGWJsdnjLLLr6jzk/?imgmax=800" width="244" height="184"></a></p> <p>We depend on Amazon Prime and Netflix for our TV entertainment, and it was at that moment that it dawned on me that she might not <em>know</em> about the commercials. “Do you know what Disneyland is?" I asked her, curiously. She shook her head. </p> <p>“Nope.” Then she thought about it for a few minutes. “Is that,” she asked, “where all the <em>Disney</em> people live?” I assured her it was, and then the magic happened. Her eyes got big and the wheels started turning, and minutes later she was counting down until we got into Disneyland itself. </p> <p>Many many things have been said about Disneyland and the man behind the empire. Many many things have been said about the characters – particularly the female characters – and I agree with a lot of them. I would rather my child <em>not</em> model her life after Aurora or Ariel or Snow White or Cinderella; I would rather she be her own person: and opinionate and willful and trying as she can be, she definitely is her own personality. But I am coming to grips with her desire for sparkly shoes and fluffy dresses; her insistence that pink is the “best color ever”; she insists that she can “run faster” in a skirt than jeans, wore the toes out of her black Mary Janes in the park, and does not discriminate between tulle and denim as far as climbing gear goes.</p> <p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsXoQQ6x2FjBOXybTm89PwgDq6hrHTrm6Eo3UwR-o9fS83w9f6NWWcR6FcwDV_mIG8-7qRFXVLLImk3Jx2WiuFjNti2CzaZedOKPuOCWk2MNluhUs-W1y_K-6aUkHqe9SJcJfylNsRNFr8/s1600-h/30097700001%25255B3%25255D.jpg"><img style="border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; margin-left: 0px; border-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; border-right: 0px" title="Cups enters the Fantasy Faire" border="0" alt="Cups enters the Fantasy Faire" align="left" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkebZMBe0m3vED9veo_0cKWVhyJHRonSol6K37v4F_d8TNbPm-YuiRZuW3x4szaL50EXBdFewfz42t1numLS2eCNzDmTb1G0D4gVCbPn6qor28cQFY_XmU5aQftB4BEIAi-cZoxtj3xQQc/?imgmax=800" width="244" height="163"></a>We went to see the princesses, but only <em>after</em> we rode Space Mountain, and the rocket ride, and shot up some aliens with Buzz Lightyear. We <em>stood in line – </em>the longest lines, I will note, in all three days at the park were for the princesses, the fairies, and Rapunzel – in front of a faux-medieval wall with a bunch of little girls (I didn’t see any brothers, besides Cap’n, and precious few dads) dressed up in their sparkly best with their pink sparkly autograph books. Some of them had princess dresses on. Some of them had princess wigs, most of which were rather hilariously askew and looked as if they were on at least their second day of wear. </p> <p>Cups was offered a selection of shirts that morning and chose her <a href="http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts-apparel/kids/bad7/">Self-Rescuing Princess</a> one, which I thought particularly apropos. It gathered comment from several mothers of girls in wigs and tulle skirts, and at least one “where did you get that awesome shirt?”, so I am judging it went over well. We made friends with everyone in line near us (kids will do that) while waiting, and then it was our turn to be escorted around a turn into the Disney Princess Fantasy Faire.<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidqbQc6I2zHHcfIsgEwZgZJeH0_9652Vyfmu22kh_27wh7rP_uTtj7nEhdo27D4bIiGDmzvBPds1ntanBbXXgv3YYTwkxRp4dSwGPqYU0ApoJPCmOqOeg66IHBT3DR7coa5dxxMIm5946b/s1600-h/PB152909%25255B5%25255D.jpg"><img style="border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; margin-left: 0px; border-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; border-right: 0px" title="Cups meets Ariel" border="0" alt="Cups meets Ariel" align="right" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimrW9YUEknCXbNA-JYY_3ezf1fmIsmRumykhAG5ocDrS_V0VQN_8S8QftQkOAfB9S1YTjhhhWlzbJpwpdsBTJ7jY6pAfBM_YhewEXRIJi_-hBdSwgOfSrlTtXYInQC6H1Z8fCydArQbl2A/?imgmax=800" width="244" height="184"></a></p> <p>I feel for the women who play princesses in the Faire. They have nothing to do but stand and mimic the mannerisms of animated women while talking to excited little girls all day long. I also admire them: when Cap’n didn’t want to give up his autograph book (ours were plain black sketchbooks decorated with the kids’ names) because he had found out how much fun it was to chew on, nobody lost their cool. There were still smiles and cheerful voices the whole time, and the photographers had their cameras going to catch the magic while we herded the kids.</p> <p>And there was magic: all three princesses (Ariel, Snow White, and Cinderella) had to hear about how, after Disneyland, we were going to go to the California Academy of Sciences to meet <em>Pierre</em>. At the fairy grotto, Tinkerbelle asked what sort of things Cups rescued herself from, and got a little shrug. “I don’t know. Stuff.”</p> <p>We made it the entire day, with a break for early dinner and Cap’n passing out on the table, and were back for accidental character breakfasts in the morning. We did go to the Jedi Academy, but Cups refused to volunteer for training (“I don’t want to be a Jedi”), although she was interested in watching. There may or may not have been an argument between Cups and Mommy, who wanted her to get her moment of fame, but in the end the stronger will prevailed and we all sat and watched instead. </p> <p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSIvkNVtFDh0fNUOl50Kcv6HlM3L9Fq2Md6enn745gLia2KLTszxeMp6Rj6yi4kSlWGsf8_nMVgxqg8Nj2rh2VB3ADG_ONL5JH2Lwt-A0xWUeZRfDkcKuGzR90ueRQiJAwW-b7Pra6hYgi/s1600-h/PB173469%25255B6%25255D.jpg"><img style="border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; margin-left: 0px; border-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; border-right: 0px" title="Cap'n gets into the spirit" border="0" alt="Cap'n gets into the spirit" align="left" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAVYAuBboEZGlAJ00vuEGad92dACmOgeWGQgQxi4M0zdKLkzFS8QZXZQODUXUZUButj3eqp7lhuRr722GBlzJiV5RpoCSbIj56U3Z5s8IMs7E20sgrqapAGow8cBr9ZQo33LqWozi5DEMK/?imgmax=800" width="184" height="244"></a>Somewhere in there, we stopped by the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique to do a little shopping, and discovered the source of the tulle and the princess wigs: it appears that you can pay to have your little girl (ages 3-12) primped and powdered and, depending on the package (they start at $50 and end upwards of $200), begemmed, bewigged, bemanicured, and begowned to look just precisely like her favorite Disney Princess, complete with photographic documentation of the process. Reservations are recommended. <em>Oh, and on the very bottom of the brochure in tiny print it mentions they do have knight makeovers too.</em> We left the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique with a solid-feeling shortsword and shield combo, as well as a Mickey Mouse-themed gem bracelet, all hand-selected by Cups. </p> <p> I spent the rest of the time feeling faintly creeped out whenever I saw one of these little girls in the $200 fantasy outfits, and wondering privately if anyone ever actually <em>got</em> a knight makeover. Did that include hairstyling, shimmering makeup, body jewels, a manicure and optional costume? (<em>Answer: according to the WDW page the <strong>Knight</strong> package includes hairstyling and a sword and shield for $14.95 plus tax: it is surprisingly inexpensive to achieve knighthood</em>). And what does it say about my ability to suspend disbelief that I couldn’t just roll it into the whole magical experience?</p> <p>Disneyland itself is a suspension of disbelief: the place is scrupulously clean, stunningly themed, and filled with cast members who have been solidly trained in the art of being pleasant and happy no matter what. If you stay at the resort hotels (we didn’t), then there’s no spending money in the park – just use your room key. We skipped the ATM surcharges and bought Disney Dollars with our debit card to keep within budget, but it felt like playing with fantasy money. The whole thing is set up from the moment you walk in to leave an impression that you’ve entered another world. Thursday morning on our Magic Morning early passes we were escorted in stage by stage, revealing the park one postcard view at a time, until it opened out and there was room to avoid a potential bottleneck. It is all choreographed and all thought out in advance. There is <em>magic</em> promised, and <em>magic</em> delivered: changeouts of characters are handled with grace (“I’m sorry, Alice and I have to have tea! With the Queen!”), and the attention to detail is everywhere. Even the greetings my children received were part of the show: Cups was almost universally greeted as “Princess”, while Cap’n was “Prince”, or “M’lord”. But I couldn’t turn my brain off: we met only one prince (Rapunzel was accompanied by Flynn Rider) despite a host of princesses and fairy godmothers. I saw little girls in princess dresses everywhere. And the <em>rides</em>… <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguP0fzK5KcVYUqIftPPxim3RBLBiULlM-uVSPv1OLww3KzC6ZsILhtuQLc0RV5Ggai5Fm2mVgBqUG_9TWLq33eq4uwqVzNV-ddUlriavStSfpzG3z0dCE0P0z793_X0LIfIFGIaPxyp1vE/s1600-h/PB152977%25255B6%25255D.jpg"><img style="border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; margin-left: 0px; border-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; border-right: 0px" title="Cups takes a break" border="0" alt="Cups takes a break" align="right" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz5CUjnuFbpt2ppSBJ3tAx2TCP5t8VUqQaOuUqXBQOdlC7GoFLHC8N2-5hEMASsaUCiFz6-RxTE_1nxEQ5OkSjxZcsgwCVv5d4an3BISYHG6lYRdSnlyv32M65WbNgPvB8PGx9LYIPksjT/?imgmax=800" width="184" height="244"></a></p> <p>Angel points out that there are all sorts of movie-themed adventure rides and storybook rides – Dumbo, Peter Pan, Pinocchio, Mr. Toad, Buzz Lightyear, et cetera – and yet the only princess-themed ride is Snow White’s Scary Adventures (and, if you stretch, Alice in Wonderland, which we did not ride). Everything else that has to do with princesses involves standing in line to meet them and get their autographs (a passive activity) or walking through Sleeping Beauty’s Castle looking at pictures (Cups: “Is that the <em>whole</em> castle?”) . It’s a little thing, but it seems to support back to the idea that there are things for <em>kids</em> to do and then there are things for <em>girls</em> to do. (<em>One counter-example: in Toontown, the kids’ coaster is <strong>Gadget’s Go Coaster</strong>, named after a female supporting character</em>).</p> <p>I have to admit that I was gratified when Cups elected to close her trip to Disneyland with the Matterhorn, Buzz Lightyear, and back-to-back trips through Space Mountain. It’s exhilarating to hear my daughter cheering for another ride on one of my favorite roller coasters ever. It’s also a learning experience for me – a tomboy at heart, most comfortable in jeans and work boots and baggy shirts – to let her pick out her own mouse ears (pink princess crown) and her own trading pins (Ariel and Tinkerbelle). It’s hard to remember sometimes that although I may want her to be tough and independent, there’s no reason she can’t do that in tulle.</p> Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8603070020231253303.post-18966121983626703502011-09-29T16:34:00.001-04:002011-09-29T16:34:15.325-04:00Gaming with Kids: Lego Heroica<p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxapQSC6qOPJCwnoceT3eX0tHOqDTIHC1epzADaDy0st-SYKXzq0MGo2wOya4-4JGz11uWNbajjT5nZm3xDrph58NVVZDNjCAHMJEzpQXxgIfl8YDdrxkcvylBIeVyuxedfoSDUw6lfxKC/s1600-h/2011082011.22.563.jpg"><img style="border-right-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; margin-left: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; margin-right: 0px" title="The Heroica Board" border="0" alt="The Heroica Board" align="left" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvoBb4LRvD1r4PGvZHDjCTCfyuugYV9gTbl7SPM6Is5EjJtYtIXI4d94UcIQ08jMG5ZOywxl4jBeZiJjKd4u14Zj5vZdy8eDSfBqTFZuKYnphtkUzi1w2BSoY0KcMfN3mGXStSe2WqdrgE/?imgmax=800" width="244" height="184"></a> Hit up the Lego booth at GenCon and got to actually play around with Heroica a bit. It seemed like the kind of thing that Cups would enjoy, and since we are always trying to find new ways to let her feel like she’s a part of the roleplaying circle and to encourage her quick and creative mind, we picked up a set a while later at our Local Big Box Store. No guilt here about going through an intermediary: Lego is too big for me to feel like I owe them anything.</p> <p>We got all of the sets right off the bat, after having seen the big setup at GenCon with them all linked, and promptly assembled everything into little modular pieces. Cups put the dice together and helped find the interesting little specialty bits. For our first game we set up the main Heroica box just as the book suggested to. After that, we put away the guidebooks, picked out a bunch of rooms, stuck them together, and picked out some microfigs. </p> <p><strong></strong> </p> <p><strong>Rules and Setup:</strong> The game sets consist of a bunch of two-by-two or three-by-three square rooms, with flavor decorations, separated by little bridges that snap into place. It’s set up with tiles of alternating colors, making each game square pretty easy to identify. Assembling it is just like any other Lego set: you can follow the instructions or not as you choose; following the instructions guarantees a certain outcome but you can create more interesting ones by deviating from them; there are extra pieces that look like you missed a step – and sometimes that is correct – and it all snaps securely together. </p> <p>Each of the Heroica sets comes with its own set of microfigs: inch-high Lego people of varying colors. It’s pretty easy to distinguish enemies from heroes at a glance, and some of the sets included bats and spiders if you are opposed to killing humanoids. All of the sets also come with color-coded health packs matching to the hero microfigs that hold four little red cones and, depending on the set, may also have a place to store weapons and defeated enemies. The color of your microfig determines its special powers (more about this later). On the Heroica site all of the microfigs have little backstories and the special powers seem to match well to the stories provided, making them easy to remember. </p> <p>The game also comes with a double-purpose (customizable!) Lego die: each of the six faces serves both as a movement die and as an attack die. Most of the faces are split diagonally: one side indicates how far you move with dots and the other side indicates the outcome of the battle. The sixth “special” face is a shield which lets your microfig use a special power or move 4 spaces. On your turn, you roll the die, move accordingly in any direction until you run out of spaces or come to something that stops you – treasure, locked doors, or enemies. When you meet an enemy you immediately stop and fight them – again by rolling the die. Depending on your roll, you either defeat them or not, and you may or may not lose health points even if you win. When you run out of little red cones on your health pack then you are knocked out and you have to roll each turn to replenish your health until you are at full again. </p> <p>Scattered around the board are various treasures: gold cones to serve as coins, little potion bottles, keys, and some special pieces as well. Keys unlock locked doors, and you can carry only one at a time. Picking them up can be strategic if you are playing to win the game, and it is in fact possible in some setups to completely blockade the other players from achieving their goals through holding a key hostage. Potions are helpful – replenishing health, moving extra spaces, and allowing a reroll of the Lego die. Coins can be used to buy weapons from the shop, which sit cutely on your health pack and give your microfig the ability to use an “almost-as-cool” version of a different microfig’s special powers. </p> <p><strong>Winning</strong>: Although Heroica is a roleplaying-style board game it still provides for a way for a particular player to win. Different suggested setups have different win conditions such as defeating a boss mob or getting to a particular piece of treasure or square on the board; we used the classic “defeat the goblin king” in our games, but there are particular pieces such as a protective helm, a chalice or a book that could make perfectly good items to retrieve from a dungeon. You could also play cooperatively, leaving out the single-player goals and bringing a party into the dungeon. </p> <p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDQn5xqmqFv1Vi-gbcZvcHbPP8D-HSgMKu7RdFG94UfV6a9UVoDoLe0CPIdfvQEAa7jVqPvzsBxtzXVXJRQwdoDWXhUgljw6rJSqEvmGxulJZi-Q2FSABcyZVEN305Ufkop6cFDOmmM0EG/s1600-h/2011082011.23.253.jpg"></a> </p> <p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDQn5xqmqFv1Vi-gbcZvcHbPP8D-HSgMKu7RdFG94UfV6a9UVoDoLe0CPIdfvQEAa7jVqPvzsBxtzXVXJRQwdoDWXhUgljw6rJSqEvmGxulJZi-Q2FSABcyZVEN305Ufkop6cFDOmmM0EG/s1600-h/2011082011.23.253.jpg"><img style="border-right-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; margin-left: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; margin-right: 0px" title="Setting up the game" border="0" alt="Setting up the game" align="right" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghHHvPEej0NB4YASDHCSt7yvZgZPpU0D9tvHhM7vvPHWhoOcpN1jz149kT4jA-eq4pd44aTrittCS_e-EDtg47RjOIFfDbxJdzWqwHe7sHMFfMBA8b-61UvjKEfvC7ciH8Yrd5Wvln7K6E/?imgmax=800" width="184" height="244"></a></p> <p></p> <p></p> <p></p> <p><strong>Gameplay: </strong>If you are playing with all the Heroica sets open, you can choose between six different microfigs and special powers for your hero: The barbarian (yellow), who can defeat all adjacent monsters and move a space; the wizard (red), who has a four-square corner-turning ranged attack; the druid (brown), who can heal back to full health; the rogue (black), who gets to defeat an adjacent monster <em>and </em>take a gold from the store; the ranger (blue), who can move one space and then has a five-space ranged attack; and the knight (grey), who can move up to 2 spaces and defeat an adjacent monster. All of the powers can be extremely useful, but none of them is overwhelmingly better than the others. All of them can be nearly duplicated by a purchased weapon’s power if you can’t live without two different powers.</p> <p>There’s not much to the game, really: you roll the die, you move, you either fight an enemy or not. you head to the defined goal. It was easy enough for four-year-old Cups to grasp with minimal explanation, and once she had the hang of the rules she really got excited about combat and rolling the die. If we had wanted to stack the rules in her favor it would have been easy enough to take the provided tiny plastic crowbar and replace some of the die faces, weighting combat in the heroes’ favor. We didn’t need to, though; she took getting defeated in good stride when it happened. </p> <p> It was during the course of our first game that I discovered that my daughter is in fact a budding roleplayer: she deviated completely from the agreed-upon goal of defeating the goblin king and meandered over to a room that had a leg of meat on a table. She declared happily that she was going to (a) spend her turn eating lunch and (b) put the meat on her head as a helmet. Not wanting to disappoint her, we tried it. It fit. The rest of the game was played with a meat head, and eventually the goblin king was defeated. </p> <p>Replayability is high, mainly due to the immense amount of fun we had building different dungeons and arranging the treasures. The game itself is really only about half as enjoyable as <em>making</em> it, something that again seems to be common to Lego constructions everywhere. There are a <em>lot</em> of little pieces, though, even accounting for keeping the rooms intact and only breaking apart the bridges: microfigs and coins and potions and weapons and health cones and keys and special pieces. Our Heroica set now resides in three boxes, one of which is half full of little plastic containers for sorting different small pieces, so this is probably a game that we aren’t going to introduce the Captain to until he is old enough to understand about not putting game pieces in his mouth.</p> <p><strong><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg59DIN63QEwqbOrKMavV0YK7-lFGqY92Jddy9Zy9ycejC0RK1AEMcQLe8XHuLgvA1HvKiKkItoKucKemyhp1seLZLuHqaI-nJRcelTQONYT3X7wddHqD8_ACx3n8fyydmnl5ZIzpOjOd-g/s1600-h/2011082011.28.053.jpg"><img style="border-right-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; margin-left: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; margin-right: 0px" title="Playing with a meat head." border="0" alt="Playing with a meat head." align="left" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjPpBzKhtT2oP2QokFExh7qOJpF79zqACfphoiXBTSybJ-Rxd0WuxGnxpwIrNi8IFQNMDZ-7vtgV0SQZXTjypgsIjAXmKRminlFnB0Qn-aaP_Tw_4QP7DjuLJBmQFoqqltmBxyT_a36Cmu/?imgmax=800" width="244" height="184"></a></strong><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg59DIN63QEwqbOrKMavV0YK7-lFGqY92Jddy9Zy9ycejC0RK1AEMcQLe8XHuLgvA1HvKiKkItoKucKemyhp1seLZLuHqaI-nJRcelTQONYT3X7wddHqD8_ACx3n8fyydmnl5ZIzpOjOd-g/s1600-h/2011082011.28.053.jpg"></a></p> <p><strong> </strong>The downside of the gameplay is that this is a dungeon which can be potentially quite extensive, and it is very easy to find your microfig on the wrong side of a lot of corridors with nothing in them, having cleared out all the mobs in the process of getting to the treasure/key/coin/leg of meat that you were pursuing. Moving across a large board at no more than four squares a turn drags a bit; we tended to roll 1 and 2 square movements more than anything else and so catching up to the party was occasionally tedious. A couple of solutions were under consideration: Randomly spawning patrols to add a little more spice to the trip; being able to move in a straight line until you encountered an item of interest or crossroads; double moves in empty hallways. We haven’t had a chance to try any of them out. </p> <p>The other downside has nothing to do with Heroica itself and everything to do with Cups. I want her to grow up without feeling like her gender makes her something exotic or unusual in the gaming world, and unfortunately Lego is not being helpful here. All the Heroica posters at GenCon featured little boys playing at being heroes; four of the six microfigs have beards or stubble; all the stories on the Lego site – heroes and villains alike – reference male characters (except for the grunts, who are only referred to in the collective). These are clever and interesting little stories that give a history to the microfigs and make the game just that much closer to a roleplaying board game; the website is interesting and has neat animations. It would have been a very little thing for Lego’s writers, I think, to make some (half?) of the heroes female – or better yet to tell the single-paragraph stories without explicitly gendering the characters. It would have been a big thing for my daughter and me to be able to identify with them.</p> <p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>Lego Heroica in its several incarnations is fun to put together and easy to play. There are a lot of small pieces to keep track of, so I recommend investing in small containers or baggies for these to save you grief in the long run. There’s a high degree of customizability and the dungeons you create can vary from straightforward and simple to bewilderingly complex. The rules are sufficient to play and yet easily adapted to a particular playstyle. Overall, a good fun family RPG boardgame with a lot of potential for storytelling practice with the younger crowd. I just wish there were women in the Heroica world.</p> Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8603070020231253303.post-23521619046472500942011-09-11T14:46:00.001-04:002011-09-11T14:46:41.221-04:00Geeklet<p><em>You might have heard this one before. But it seemed apropos to this blog, so I am reposting.</em></p> <p>My child wears black and denim<br> or pink and neon green<br>She likes Mythbusters reruns<br> and her tiny iPod screen<br>She cheats at Chutes and Ladders<br> and makes up words to songs<br>She knows to hide from Daleks<br> and fight zombies on the lawn</p> <p>We bargain over Xbox<br> and Clone Wars DVDs<br>And sing They Might be Giants<br> when we practice A-B-C's<br>She likes to search the backyard<br> for flowers, twigs, and rocks<br>And in her dresser drawer<br> are never matching socks</p> <p>My child wears purple rain boots<br> and flowers in her hair<br>She reads books after lights-out<br> and plays with teddy bears<br>She knows about the Wardrobe <br> and the wicked witch in white<br>And we sing Twinkle Twinkle<br> when she lays down at night,</p> <blockquote> <p>- nsb.</p></blockquote> Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8603070020231253303.post-75416204812934126382011-09-11T00:06:00.001-04:002011-09-11T00:06:00.184-04:00Hollowpoint: Wild Wild West<p>Got folks together the other weekend to play Hollowpoint and see if I enjoyed GMing it as much as I liked playing it. Threw out the invitation to the winds and got back an OK from two of our Pathfinder regulars, my husband, an old friend recently returned from Places Southwest, and a couple whom we do not get to do RPG's with very often. It was a big group. I got to count out a LOT of dice.<br></p> <p>Skin: Steampunk Western. <br>Mission: (1) Rescue Mister Banks's daughter from the Pinkertons. (2) Get the deed to the Lucky Star out of the train's lockbox before the Dawson Gang does.</p> <p>We took a few minutes to get everyone settled - used the <a href="http://www.vsca.ca/Hollowpoint/toe-tag-char.pdf">toe tag character sheets</a> which amused the hell out of my players - and ran them all through character gen in about twenty minutes, counting chasing kids and asking questions. There were Complications from almost every player, which definitely made things more interesting. There were also a lot of questions starting with “can we have…” from my D&D-based group, who were almost obscenely pleased with the idea that they <em>could</em> in fact have whatever it was they were asking for.</p> <p>Several of the players took low to nothing in Kill, so they schmoozed their way past the engineer (Complication: <em>I am the engineer’s daughter</em>) and the Pinkertons before settling into the real meat of the adventure. There was a lot of throwing people out of train windows. There was a lot of Terror and Dig and Cool being used, with the occasional gunfire battle. There were Pinkertons hiding in the restrooms and using earpiece microphones to transmit information down the train. There were traits being burned in new and interesting ways as the players realized that a scene was headed for a Wash or that they just needed One More Hit in Terror to make things happen.</p> <p>I was surprised at how much the players had to do with creating the scenes; I almost didn’t need to be there except to roll handfuls of dice and watch them get torn apart. But the best part for me was setting up a Retribution. </p> <p>They had Miss Banks in friendly custody after Terrorizing the Pinkerton agent holding her hostage (Complication: <em>I rescued Miss Banks from a brothel in Juarez once</em>). They had successfully Conned some of the Dawson Gang into watching her for them (Complication: <em>I left the Dawson Gang under friendly circumstances</em>). And then the rest of the gang showed up, on flying steel horses, and shot the hell out of Agent Jayne. “It was like they were gunning for him or something.” Chalk one up to Complication: <em>I left the Dawson Gang under unfriendly circumstances</em>, and bring in an Operative loaded on Cool to help finish out the show. </p> <p>Jeffery Dawson learned an important lesson about being out-Cooled (do not stick a deed down your pants to keep it away from an Operative) and an Agent learned about getting Conned by a fast-talking pretty boy, right up until he got his deed taken away anyway. Everyone got to play a role: Operative Sylvia may have been the one doing the crotch-grab, but she couldn’t do it without backup – and backup was provided in full.</p> <p>Everyone left the table feeling satisfied, accomplished, and having thoroughly enjoyed themselves. My quiet players opened up with very little prompting, and as promised the scenes pretty much ran without my guidance. I still very much enjoy the dice mechanic for making scenes flow smoothly, and it was clear and easy for the players as well. “Not so much math” was the main take-home comment.</p> <p>We did notice that unless I am splitting my dice pool for a Principal or a Catch that I will never have more than 6 actions (one per side), so the massive dice pool of the GM tends to lend itself to longer runs which means I get to go first most of the time. However, once the players get a turn they are likely to wipe out everything I have left, so it evens out. I’m not attached to NPCs because I haven’t spent more than twenty seconds statting them up by deciding how many dice they get, so I don’t get as defensive when they get out-cooled because my investment is low. As a GM, my biggest hurdle is getting over my fear of killing PC’s in mundane ways. Shooting the hell out of Agent Jayne was, in fact, extremely satisfying for all of us and Operative Sylvia was statted up by the time the scene was completed. </p> <p>Still love this system and the next time we are looking for a one-nighter it will probably be the first off the shelf.</p> Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8603070020231253303.post-39480248882371727612011-08-19T22:04:00.001-04:002012-03-31T17:15:56.192-04:00Split PersonalitiesWhen I was in college, we experimented with playing <em>Shadowrun</em> instead of our usual D&D game (2nd Edition, Skills and Powers, for those who are keeping track). Our GM, who is a fantasy writer by trade and a phenomenal storyteller, learned enough of the rules to manage the game, and we set out to raid a corporate stronghold – a decker or two, a mage, a street sam, a rigger, and a couple of other supporting cast whose classes are lost in the mists of time. <br />
The raid went well, relatively speaking; as well as a Shadowrun ever goes, really. We all got out alive. The base was still standing. The Matrix was fantasy-themed with kobolds for guard programs and dungeons for data storage, but that was sort of nice flavor. When we were done, none of the electronics worked and something horrible had happened to the guard bots and most of the employees of the stronghold, and I do remember taking over a security cannon at one point and just opening fire randomly while I worked out the controls, but we got what we had come for and got out alive again. We were expecting to get paid – maybe we did get paid – and we bought new things with our hard-earned cash: cyberware and new deck parts and explosives and such. <br />
And then Bad Things started happening. Deck parts were booby-trapped. Cyberware blew up. Explosives did. Our net for the entire Shadowrun was negative. And we as players complained: we had bought these things with our reward money. Why were they being taken away? And our GM shook his head and said “I can’t reward you for what you did. It’s just not <em>right</em>.” <br />
Lesson learned: When playing under someone with an epic fantasy background and a strongly developed sense of literary justice, stick to epic fantasy. Don’t be bad guys, because bad guys will <em>get it </em>in the end. <br />
Compare this with the conscientious amorality of <em><a href="http://www.vsca.ca/Hollowpoint/">Hollowpoint</a> </em>(“Bad people killing bad people for bad reasons.”) and its positive <em>delight</em> in antisocial mayhem of all kinds, and it got me thinking about my own tabletop game (Pathfinder, for those keeping score) and the interplay between player and character morality. It’s an ongoing game, and I know I have players who read the blog, so I’m not going to spoiler anything that shouldn’t already be adequately clear, but the current campaign arc deals primarily with big questions regarding alignment, actions, and their effects on one’s character. <br />
My players are old friends: many of us have known each other for more than a decade, and some of us have been gaming together that long. Some of us are married, and several of us have children, so our sessions are planned around work and graduate school and babysitting duties. Many of us attend church together, so Sunday afternoons when everyone is in the same place anyway are an ideal time to game. These days instead of pizza and Mountain Dew, we potluck or put things in the crockpot; we drink homebrewed beer or IBC from the bottle. We have dice trays that were hand-turned by one of our players. They are my friends: people who I know spend their time teaching youth and making families and working for social justice and being Good People. <br />
And they are playing characters whose moral spectrum rages from Vengeful Crusader to Ravening Sociopath. Case in point: Party reaches next destination along the path to their end goal. They discover that the inn in question has been burned to the ground and its inhabitants butchered; the scene is designed to engender maximum outrage. I know my players pretty well by now, so filled with outrage they head off to the nearest town to track down the perpetrators of this particular heinous deed. <br />
Turns out that the perpetrators in question are a frighteningly zealous cult purporting to follow the Lawful Good god, and one of the main instigators is the high priest. He’s arrogant and obnoxious and unlikable and claims he’s doing his moral duty by exterminating evildoers in the realm. He is absolutely certain – and even states he’s found proof – that the philanthropic organization the party is working for is actually a nest of evil. So the party kills him, raids the treasure chest, pillages his memories and sets out to mop up the rest of the raiders. <br />
One of the party members has one of those one-off artifacts that get thrown into campaigns because it seems like a good idea at the time. This particular one siphons memories: the last hour before death. It is an evil thing and a corrupting thing which I give to parties periodically just to see what they will do with it. Sometimes they destroy it. This party, or at least the party member who has it, <i>uses</i> it – and frequently – to serve in lieu of interrogation. At one point, he sat down next to a prisoner, tied and bound, and just rambled off all the keywords he knew of for twenty minutes or so before performing a <em>coup de grâce </em>on the poor man and then taking the next twenty minutes to sift through the information provided. <br />
Thus armed with information that once <em>again</em> indicated that the Zenith firmly believes the Phoenix Dawn is an agent of evil, and in possession of actual <em>holy symbols of evil</em> taken from the destroyed inn, the party proceeded to hunt down and exterminate all of the ringleaders of the raid, one at a time, in a night of terror. Their only concession to justice was to ask a teenaged boy whether he regretted what he’d done before cutting him down. When I mentioned that there was an infant child in one house they were plotting to burn down, I was treated to actual groans of irritation from my players that I’d dared to stand in the way of their fun. <br />
They stopped about two-thirds of the way down their list because they were running out of nighttime, hijacked a boat, and took the captain out onto the lake. There was some debate about how far out to sail before dumping him overboard, at least, but the faction that wanted <em>almost too far to swim</em> seemed to win out. As I was narrating the poor man’s swim back to shore, I was interrupted: “I cast <em>Daze </em>on him before he’s out of range.” Very thorough, this band of vigilantes. <br />
This is probably the sort of behavior I am not supposed to condone. But this sort of behavior is so very <em>interesting </em>to see, which is probably why the campaign is built around grey moral areas and dilemmas with no good answer, and why I let them run rampant without artificially imposing the rule of law on them. After all, there is a curious symmetry to what the party have done to the Zenith, in light of what the Zenith did in the first place. It’s more dramatic to let them figure that out all by themselves than to make someone explain it to them. <br />
Besides, they were having so much <em>fun.</em>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8603070020231253303.post-2925095080437856992011-08-14T16:09:00.001-04:002011-08-14T16:09:40.602-04:00Dice and things: Square Shooters<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxIYkgruP6nGvzhxda2P2sSzW5QGE9QhCQYC7e9c9jm5HZq_Uov2SHHxinJfI3lD0bRU-XEKVvh_sqmg4cu1qBm1kx_wBx1eJiwSZAyomqWYk7GxzUusYkgOOH8LCt5Um2_gGELvxkfVCR/s1600-h/P8142323%25255B15%25255D.jpg"><img style="display: inline; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px" title="Square Shooters Play Layout" alt="Square Shooters Play Layout" align="left" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWigvltKwbquNCqB-o7Ht5RMbd2t3SeAFxckNyxkaFsepM2_FyZ83wCjgBDGoHQW3dNrc_JDlleMN8U7WAvdD42rRppNp_e020x7FfM4Nh9u1Ex_tcRE8LJPmEJZz5LqMixKRb4hunIx-1/?imgmax=800" width="240" height="180"></a> <p>We spent a lot of time in the dealers’ hall at GenCon – this year with two whole days <em>sans enfants</em> we actually had time to demo some games. The other two days were our “two minute demo days” – we’d play a game until the kids started screaming, which was usually about two minutes. Cups is old enough to be bored if she’s not included and young enough to have a hard time with anything but uncomplicated rules; she is also in that awkward gamer stage where cheating is viewed as something that just bypasses all that waiting around to win, and not as an actual <em>bad thing</em>. This is adorable when she uses it to shorten a game of Candyland (seriously? On <em>random chance</em> you can get sent back to the beginning at any point?) and intensely frustrating when she does not understand why she shouldn’t. </p> <p>One of the games we demo’d with Cups around and then did not get back around to buying at the Con itself was <a href="http://www.squareshooters.com/">Square Shooters</a>, which is rather cleverly based on mathematics. In essence, if you count the two jokers, there are 54 cards in a deck – which is a precise multiple of 6. According to the <a href="http://www.squareshooters.com/about-dice.html">story</a>, creator Carmelyn Calvert then spent a night of innovative fury rearranging those 54 potential faces onto 9 six-sided dice such that it was possible to roll every conceivable 4-of-a-kind as well as every conceivable straight flush. In the morning, she had nine dice and a game that is sort of like poker and sort of like Yahtzee. </p> <p><strong>Unboxing: </strong>The basic game set, which we found post-Con at our friendly neighborhood Big Box Store while browsing for something completely different, has a “storage bag”, nine dice, a small deck of cards, 100 dime-sized plastic poker chips and the instructions. It all fits into the bag with a little creative packing (put the instructions in first) and can then slip onto a small to medium wrist or into the pocket of a pair of cargo shorts for portability. The chips and bag are fairly light construction, but the cards themselves are about the sturdiness of your average Bicycle playing cards, if only about half the size, and the dice have a good solid heft and roll to them. We spent a while turning them around and the claims regarding what can be rolled do appear to be true.</p> <p><strong>Gameplay: </strong>We picked up the set on the way out to a friend’s house for a bonfire, where we snagged her just-starting-middle-school son for a test run game. I rolled out the dice and the first thing out of his mouth was “But I don’t know how to play poker!” We were prepared for that. The game requires you to know or be able to learn what some basic poker terms mean: straight, flush, royal flush, two-of-a-kind, four-of-a-kind, and full house. It also provides a cheat sheet including scoring rank in its instructions, which are clear and concise. It also contains a conversion guide, in case you want to play rummy or twenty-one with the same dice. “Holding” card games such as Gin would probably be unfeasible, but anything that depends on the turn of a card is probably doable with the set of dice. </p> <p>In the basic game, you turn over the top card from the deck and take three tries to meet one of two goals on it. There is a low goal such as “two pair” or “straight flush”, and then there is a high goal, which challenges you to match a specific set of faces with your dice. For example, in the setup above, the low-goal – a royal flush – is worth 6 chips and the high goal – a royal flush in clubs – is worth 12 chips. There are two jokers as wild cards, and you can save or reroll any of the nine dice during your three rolls. If you match one or the other, you get the chips and play passes to the next person. If you don’t, you get nothing. There are some modifier cards: a <em>Joker</em> card that can be used later in play; <em>Quickdraw</em> that allows you to chip in on someone else’s potential gain and win the same number of chips they do (playable just before or after someone else’s first roll only); <em>Double Down</em> to double the stakes of any given roll, and <em>Showdown</em>, which lets you challenge another player to a roll-off for high hand, winner takes six chips from the loser. Gameplay continues for a set number of rounds (they suggest 8) and the winner is the player with the most chips.</p> <p>There’s no betting in <em>Square Shooters</em>, which is a nuance that I appreciate: the flow of chips is essentially a point-scoring system rather than an interplay between the players themselves (<em>Showdown</em> excluded). It’s easy for one player to get ahead – some combinations are worth far more than others, and your stakes are determined by the card you draw. Despite his reservations, our friend’s son turned out to be a natural with the dice (he won by a factor of two), and as we worked through teaching him how to play some of the strategy of the game became apparent. Because not every die contains every possible card face – and two of them have a wild side – selecting which dice to keep versus reroll can change your chances for success significantly. I suspect familiarity with the dice would be as beneficial as knowing your cards is in a regular game; as we were all new to the dice there was a lot of picking them up and studying the non-playing sides to find where target faces were. </p> <p><strong>Summary:</strong> As packaged, <em>Square Shooters </em>is a quick and fun game for older kids and adults. Altering the number of rounds you play can raise or lower the stakes, and there is enough chance involved that an experienced player is not necessarily going to demolish a new one. We had a good time and entertained some other folks at the bonfire while taking up minimal table space. Setup is quick, the rules don’t take much explaining, and the instructions are clear and complete. Since the dice get passed from player to player there’s really no upper limit to how many can play.</p> <p>The game is adaptable out of the box: the website has a number of other games to play with the dice – mainly new versions of classic card games – and Cups was entertained for quite some time at the dealer’s booth by just trying to roll a match for a given card. She’s probably a little young to play the full game, still, but a two-player shootout between the adults is entirely feasible. For our family with four-year-old Cups and nine-month-old Cap’n, the downside is probably the number of small pieces involved: this is a game for playing on high tables and picking up very carefully, lest a die or a chip wind up becoming baby food.</p> Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0