This year’s primary Christmas theme: driving. Driving north, driving west, driving south and east again, down snowy roads, and down highways slick with rain and bracketed with ditch-dwelling cars. We arrived safely at each of our many destinations — thank God and the new tires we purchased last week — but the hours on the road were many and stressful, so it’s good to be back.
Our secondary Christmas theme: Playing AT-43. I picked up a pair of starter sets for my two pairs of nephews, and spent some quality time playing / teaching them how to play the game. When I purchased the games, I was informed that the basic rules pretty much break down if you want to play anything beyond the starter units, and I saw this to be true.
The game runs on a Universal Resolution Table (or something like that) that comes with the starter set but, near as I can tell, is never actually mentioned in the rules. Instead, the starter rules direct the player to a series of tables on the back cover derived from the universal table. These tables could be slightly easier to explain to the newcomer, except that the rules never actually explain how to use the tables. Oh, any gamer worth his 2d6 can figure it out from context and the examples, but it does beg the question of why you’d bother with “training wheel” rules if you’re not going to properly explain how to use them.
Nevertheless, both sets of nephews were thrilled with the games. And why not? The figs are gorgeous. The game is fun. And with me to teach them the rules, they didn’t even have to deal with the minor complaints above.
Now I’m left to decide whether I want to get myself a starter set, or just pick up some unit boxes and a copy of the actual rulebook. I’m thinking of the second option (it’s cheaper), but man, that Gogloth is sweet.
…And you know who you are… Might I recommend the brilliantly horrifying, yet seasonally-appropriate music CD, A Very Scary Solstice from those deranged souls at the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society.
Be sure to check out the free sample songs. You’ll be nodding along to the familiar tunes, even as your mind slips cheerily into madness.
(As I finished writing that header up there, it occurred to me that a dwindling portion of the population will even catch the TV commercial reference, and I suspect a portion of them didn’t know it was from a commercial. Does this mean I’m getting old and irrelevant? Nah, it means I’m lazy when it comes to whipping up snappy headlines.)
So it’s come to my attention that Will Hindmarch and Jeff Tidball, a pair of top-notch writers and game designers (two great tastes that taste great together) have unleashed Gameplaywrite, their new website dedicated to games, stories, and that yummy middle area where they intersect.
I’m adding it to my bookmarks. And if you care about writing stories and designing games, you should too.
…Or come for the swashbuckling, and stay for the princess. Either way, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Mars: Shadows of a Dying World is heaping helping of d20 pulp goodness.
No, I didn’t do any writing on this one (though I wish I had!); I’m just handling the PDF logistics for our friends at Skirmisher. But as a fan of flashing blades, savage monsters, and weird alien planets, I feel it’s my duty to point this one out to my fellow fans.
I won’t write reviews. Not on this site, anyway. While it’s always entertaining to read someone tear apart a bad product (and bad reviews are more fun to write), I prefer to take the Knights of the Dinner Table approach, and just report on those things I find cool, fun, giggle-inducing, or otherwise worth recommending.
While I’m a little late to jump on this particular bandwagon, I would like to recommend the movie Beowulf to those who like such things. By “such things,” I mean over-the-top fantasy action, in which the entire movie is tall tale told by master storyteller (Neil Gaiman, who can do no wrong) given to exaggeration and melodrama. Yes, it’s all a bit much — the movie is so macho, it makes 300 look like a chick flick — but that’s kind of the point. And it makes its point well.
Yes, I’m sure the literary purists will cringe at the liberties taken. And the historians will weep at the anachronistic, though well-meaning, attempts at historical accuracy. But if you’re not one of those, and don’t mind a little blood and hair on the chest of your movies, you should check out Beowulf while it’s still in theaters.
