A Kingdom for Kelflings

Over the summertime I got to be a judge in the PAX 10 game design contest. I spent a day in a computer lab at DigiPen, trying out and rating about 10 of the 100 odd entries. One of my favorites was A Kingdom for Kelflings. In the game you play a giant helping the diminutive kelflings build their community. It has similar gameplay elements to other building games but the conceit of playing the giant is a nice twist. When you want to set a kelfling to a particular task, you pick up its kicking and screaming little body and then set it down where you want it to work. While I found the game charming and fun, it did not win the PAX 10 contest. That was the last I heard of it until last night.

So I was over at Rick’s playing a game of 40K (aside: snake eyes on a plasma gun shot; really?) when I got a text from Kate. She said that she had found a new game and that Nicole was now bogarting the Xbox playing it. When I got home Nik was still going. When I took a look at what she was playing I said, “Hey, I know that game!” It was A Kingdom for Kelflings, released recently on XBox Live Arcade. The game looks the same as when I judged it with one key difference: the giant in the game is your new Xbox avatar. So if you made an avatar that looks like you, now you can help the kelflings build their kingdom in person. Nicole played the game for like six hours last night and told me she “loved loved loved it.” It’s like we’re married or something.

BRP Freeport

About a month ago I talked about getting the new Basic Roleplaying core book from Chaosium and mused about doing a BRP Freeport Companion. It is an appealing idea, as Freeport is certainly influenced by Call of Cthulhu and doing a BRP companion would bring the setting closer to its roots in some sense. The question remains whether it makes business sense to do the book for Green Ronin?

Apparently, the BRP fan community discovered my blog post because all week I’ve had gamers posting comments on that entry telling me they’d love to see a BRP Freeport Companion. It’s not exactly market research but it’s nice to see some interest in the idea. Thanks for being pro-active, BRP fans! I can’t commit to anything but I am considering ways to make this happen.

Time Flies But Aeroplanes Crash

Weeks have been flying by of late. That’s good for the work week, but it also means weekends go by in a flash.

Friday I was feeling cruddy so I stayed in. Saturday and Sunday were similar: work during the day and then dinner out. Last night we got together with two friends of mine from high school, Elizabeth and Geoff, who I only recently discovered lived in Seattle. I’ve gotten together with them for lunch but we hadn’t done the full family meet up. They had us over to their beautiful house in Magnolia and I introduced them to Nicole and Kate and met their five kids. It’s been really nice to rekindle that friendship and get to know each other again as adults. Tonight we went out to the Saffron Grill with Nicole’s brother and his girlfriend, which was also nice. I could drink that chai endlessly.

Working on the weekend, which I do pretty much every weekend, can be a drag when it’s just administration, scheduling, contracting, and other such bullshit. This weekend I got to spend most of my time doing — gasp — game design. Yeah, the reason I got into this in the first place. I am designing a new RPG and I had a productive couple of days building out the framework and core mechanics. I’m quite pleased with what I’ve done so far. The concepts are coming together quickly, probably because I’ve the last couple of years thinking about what I want from this type of game. I’m afraid I can’t talk about what the game is just yet, but you may seen announcement before Xmas.

And now the weekend is over already. Ah well.

A Taste of History

Last night I took Nicole to local foodie favorite the Herbfarm for a birthday dinner. The meal was tremendous (bleu cheese ice cream…so good), but I’ll let Nik blog about that. What captured my imagination is a unique item only the Herbfarm offers. They call it “The Oldest Wine You’ll Ever Drink.” The Herbfarm has a very small amount of Madeira that was bottled in 1795 and forgotten in a Scottish castle for over a century. No other wine would be potable after 200+ years but because of the unique nature of Madeira it has continued to improve. When this wine was bottled, George Washington was still president of the United States. Napoleon dispersed Royalists with “a whiff of grapeshot” during the French Revolution, thus beginning his rise to power. George Peabody, the man my home town in MA was named after, was born. That Madeira is a taste of history I would like to have.

The problem, of course, is that it doesn’t come cheap. The 1795 Madeira is $365 per ounce. Yes, that’s per ounce. The taste of 1795 will have to remain in my imagination for the foreseeable future.

8 Years of Madness Ending

Now this is a huge step in the right direction. I’ll have more to say about what Obama must do to actually make some positive changes in America and the world later. Analysis can wait though; tonight is for celebrating. Take it away, Black Flag.

Jealous cowards try to control
Rise above, we’re gonna rise above
They distort what we say
Rise above, we’re gonna rise above
Try and stop what we do
Rise above, we’re gonna rise above
When they can’t do it themselves
Rise above, we’re gonna rise above
We are tired of your abuse
Try to stop us, it’s no use

Society’s arms of control
Rise above, we’re gonna rise above
Think they’re smart, can’t think for themselves
Rise above, we’re gonna rise above
Laugh at us behind our backs
Rise above, we’re gonna rise above
I find satisfaction in what they lack
Rise above, we’re gonna rise above
We are tired of your abuse
Try to stop us, but it’s no use

We are tired of your abuse
Try to stop us, it’s no use

We’re born with a chance
Rise above, we’re gonna rise above
I am gonna have my chance
Rise above, we’re gonna rise above
We are born with a chance
Rise above, we’re gonna rise above
And I am gonna have my chance
Rise above, we’re gonna rise above
We are tired of your abuse
Try to stop us, it’s no use

Rise above
Rise above
Rise above
We’re gonna rise above
We’re gonna rise above
We’re gonna rise above

The Great Rout of ’08

I watched Rachel Maddow’s interview with Obama the other day. She asked him why he attacked the policies of George Bush and John McCain specifically but not the Republican Party in general. His answer was that he didn’t want to alienate moderate Republicans by attacking their party. He didn’t want it to be politics as usual. This was a smart tactic and it’ll probably pay off on Tuesday. I, however, am not Barack Obama and I don’t need to play nice.

To be clear I am neither a Democrat nor a Republican. I vote for the Democrats most of the time because they are closer to my views, but both parties have their problems. I used to feel there was very little difference between them honestly. When Bush “won” the election in 2000, Nicole was really upset. I said, “How much damage could he really do in 4 years?”

It turns out he and his administration did an unbelievable amount of damage during his two terms in office. And it was the continued support of the Republican Party that let him do so, particularly for the first 6 years when they controlled all branches of government. Let’s quickly reviews the accomplishments of the Republican leadership for the past 8 years.

* The attacks on 9/11 happened because of a spectacular intelligence failure. The Republicans have used 9/11 to good effect to pursue their own agenda, but we should never forget that the worst attack on America since Pearl Harbor happened on their watch.

* American invaded two countries, both of which have become military quagmires. American casualty figures are well known, but much less publicized is the cost in Iraqi and Afghani lives. It is estimated that at least 600,000 Iraqi civilians have died as a result of the US invasion and the subsequent civil war. Imagine if every single citizen in Seattle was murdered and you get the idea.

* The Republican leadership lied to the American people and the world to justify the war in Iraq. There were no weapons of mass destruction there and Saddam Hussein was not an imminent threat to the USA.

* Despite all the rhetoric, America is less safe than it was 8 years ago. Our military has been run ragged and is stretched too thin. The invasion of Iraq only served to radicalize more people and was a positive boon to Al Queda recruitment.

* America, which once tried to “make the world safe for democracy,” began torturing prisoners, despite the known inefficacy of such techniques. Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib are but the most publicized examples of America’s shame.

* While the infrastructure of America is literally falling apart (remember the Minneapolis bridge?) and the education system declines, there have been never ending tax cuts. During two wars no less. Most of these tax cuts have served the wealthiest Americans and the biggest corporations.

* Bush and particularly Cheney made a mockery of Constitution. Their ideas of executive privilege were of dubious legality and ran counter to the foundations of American democracy. There are three branches of government for a reason and a president can’t hide behind executive privilege as if he was a monarch. See the American Revolution.

* The Department of Justice was politicized to a noxious degree. This led to political cronyism of the worst kind, as typified by Alberto Gonsalez, and of course the US attorney firings scandal.

* With so much of the National Guard serving oversees, the reaction to the Hurricane Katrina disaster was shameful. A major American city was nearly wiped off the map and the government stood by while it happened. When the response did come, it was slow, inept, and wasteful.

* Environmental regulations have been loosened and the Kyoto Protocols have not been ratified. Science itself has been assaulted by religious fundamentalism.

* As part of the overall Republican plan of making the rich richer and the poor poorer, the profits of capitalism have become increasingly privatized while its losses have become socialized. The total faith in the free market and the frenzy of deregulation led us to the current financial crisis, which was totally predictable. Now we have these financial giants who are “too big to fail”, so they get government handouts with few strings attached.

This is what 8 years of Republican leadership have gotten America and if you vote for John McCain on Tuesday, you are giving the Republican Party a pass for its malfeasance, its ineptness, and its failed policies. That is why it is not enough for Barack Obama to win this election. Republicans on every level of government need to be hounded out of office. They need to pay a political price for what they have done to this country and to others. They need to spend 10 or 20 years in the wilderness, taking a good hard look at their party. When they own up to their mistakes, repudiate Neo-Conservatism, and stop kowtowing to the fundamentalist wingnuts a la Palin, then maybe they can be allowed near the machinery of power again.

Now you might say that John McCain is a maverick and he wouldn’t be like Bush. I have two things to say to that. First, he’s not that much of a maverick, seeing as how he voted with Bush most of the time. Second, even if he was a big maverick, it doesn’t matter. John McCain wouldn’t be running the country alone; he’d be doing it with the leadership of his party. The same party that got us into this mess in the first place. It’s funny how McCain goes on and on about the troubles of America, but never admits that they are of the making of his own party.

This week remember that it’s not just about Obama (though it is nice to have someone I can vote for without holding my nose). This is about utterly crushing the Republican Party, savaging them so badly that they have no choice but to reevaluate their basic tenets. So do your part to vote down Republicans running for the Senate, for the House, for governor, for mayor, for judges, and on and on. Let this be the Great Rout of ’08 and may it lead to a better tomorrow for America and the world.

So say we all.