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W. Eric Martin
United States
Apex
North Carolina
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• "Morning Edition", a radio program on U.S. public radio network NPR, interviewed designer Rob Daviau to talk about Risk: Legacy. An excerpt:
Quote: "Why do board games always start over?" Daviau says. "They have no memory — it's like Groundhog Day. What if there was a way to make a board game sort of remember one game to the next, so it became an ongoing narrative rather than a series of isolated events?"
• And Risk: Legacy was also featured in the San Francisco Chronicle's annual round-up of new games. While aimed at the casual newspaper reader, the Chronicle's suggestions have been anything but mainstream. Games that merited the prized "jumpy man" include Haggis, The Resistance, Cargo Noir, Pantheon, Automobile (!), and the aforementioned Risk: Legacy. (For the record, I worked in a game store in San Francisco from 1991 to 1994, and our store gave games each year to Mick LaSalle, a movie critic who also wrote the game round-up.)
• Designer Jay Cormier and Sen-Foong Lim have released a print-and-play version of But Wait, There's More!, a party game in which you pitch wacky products to the other players as the game was initially under contract with a publisher, but then released back to the designers once an "eerily similar" version of the game was announced from someone else.
• Designer Matt Tolman has posted a trilogy of videos on BGG demonstrating how he makes multiple prototypes quickly and relatively easy – once you get those pesky ol' "what is my game about and how do we play it" questions out of the way.
• Wrapping presents for the gamer in your life? Steve Jackson Games has downloadable Munchkin and "illuminated eye" tags and gift cards, if those would be your thing or the thing of the one receiving the present.
• For another take on gaming gifts, albeit something that won't be delivered until January 2012, how about chocolate dice, specifically the familiar six-die set from Dungeons & Dragons of old with a d20, d12, d10, d8, d6 and d4. The Kickstarter project behind the dice includes a FAQ that covers topics not normally an issue for those handling dice, such as "Are the dice vegan or lactose or dairy friendly?"
• German publisher 2F-Spiele has released a downloadable playmat (PDF) for Friedemann Friese's Friday to help you organize everything during play.
• Moonster Games and Cocktail Games are holding a game-naming contest (read: marketing opportunity/PR) for a joint release from the two French publishers. What's the game about? Scary, ghastly oogly-boogly monsters have landed on Earth and are ready to start a wave of terror among the native population – but alas on this planet they are tiny little things and not scary at all. Players need to catch these monsters, who have unfortunately landed in your house where you are ready to swat them. the winner of the name-this-game contest gets a collector's edition of Gosu and a handful of Cocktail titles.
• Hamish Sterling and his Pocket Cricket – no, not a bug, ya little wisenheimer – are briefly profiled in The Cairns Post (AU). One interesting tidbit for those interested in producing their own games. Pocket Cricket consists of a drawbag, rules, and a handful of dice and as Sterling notes in the news article, "It's cost us $4,500 all up, including the website."
• Want to know the value of your collection of board and card games – or at least the replacement cost of most items in it? Probably not, unless you have the smelling salts handy, but should you be so bold you can head to BGGtools.com, which is not associated with BGG, enter your BGG username, then watch and wait for the total to spring up and melt your eyeballs. My total, minus the 225 games that have never been sold in the BGG marketplace (oh, and the few dozen games acquired at Spiel 2011 and not yet entered, and ...): nearly $22k. (HT: FatherGeek.com)
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Quote:"Why do board games always start over?" Daviau says. "They have no memory — it's like Groundhog Day. What if there was a way to make a board game sort of remember one game to the next, so it became an ongoing narrative rather than a series of isolated events?"
its in USD?
Thankfully the game plays very well without it. It's a neat little take on the popular deckbuilding mechanic, by the way, and it's refreshingly hard.
