Last night Nicole took me out for a birthday dinner at the Herbfarm, a beloved institution of Seattle foodies. Although we’ve lived here for ten years, this was our first time there. I will write it about more when I have a chance, but let me just say three things. First, the meal was fantastic and catapulted into our top three dinners ever list. Second, it was not just a meal but an experience, beginning with tours of their gardens and ending five and a half hours and nine courses later. Lastly, I am still full after a night’s sleep. Damn, that great. Cheers to my awesome wife for making it happen.

Our Tuesday night roleplaying group has been hit or miss for quite some time now. Many people in the group are frequent business travelers and particularly during the summer convention season getting together can be difficult. And yet we continue trying to keep RPG campaigns going with predictable results. One guy misses one session and someone else the next. Then we don’t play for two weeks and forget half of what’s going on the adventure. Last week we said to hell with it and played Walk the Plank and Ticket to Ride instead. The result was one of the best game nights in a long time. Over the weekend I started thinking about our dogged insistence on clinging to RPGs when it hasn’t really been working out. Why not take a break and just play some board and card games for awhile? Those can be played with whoever shows up and finished in a night. Turns out other folks in the group were having similar thoughts and we played Ticket to Ride again last night. I think we’ll probably continue the trend until we’re ready to start playtesting the A Song of Ice and Fire RPG. I’m betting the result will be us actually gaming more on a weekly basis, and I’ll still get some roleplaying in with my bi-weekly Spirit of the Century game.

Of course having said all that, I’ve been pondering how fun it would be to run a game set in the world of the comic Fables. For those who haven’t read it, Fables is about faery tale characters living in the modern world. They were driven from their homelands by a mysterious bad guy called the Adversary and now have to live among us. The comic has a lot of fun with classic characters like the Big Bad Wolf, Snow White, Prince Charming, Goldilocks, etc. I think I could run a cool game in which players picked real world fables to play and then worked out living here has changed them. Maybe the trick would be planning out one story arc and just running it for 4-6 sessions and calling it good. The open-ended campaigns have not been working for us.

Friday night I got home from work a bit early. Since Nik and Kate were out at a school play, I took the opportunity to watch Once Were Warriors (domestic violence amongst the Maori) and Letters from Iwo Jim (the companion piece to Flags of Our Fathers that shows the battle from the Japanese POV). So yeah, a real cheery night of entertainment. I was pleased I finally had a chance to see Letters, as both my attempts to see it in the theater were abortive.

Saturday I played Spirit of the Century in the afternoon. It was largely a bridge session that set up the big climactic fight for next time, when we face off against the evil Russian scientist in a battle above an active volcano. From the game I went right to the Family Fun Center in Renton for Kate’s delayed birthday party. She has some nice friends, but even so keeping track of eight kids in a massively crowded and incredibly loud arcade and mini-amusement park was not exactly relaxing. Kate and the kids had a great time though and I think it was easily her best birthday party to date. I could have gone to bed after that, but at 10 I went down to Studio Seven to catch Iron Cross. They were a DC skinhead band from the early 80s and singer Sab Grey has brought them back in a new incarnation. The band was a bit stiff to start but once they got warmed up they gave a good performance. I expected the show to be packed with every skinhead in a 300 mile radius, but the promotion of the show was shit and there were maybe 120 people there. I only found out about it by accident myself. Ex-WotC staffer John Dunn was in Iron Cross in the early 80s and he was on hand to check them out. Sab brought him up on stage to play Criminal Minds with them, which was cool. I caught up with John in the bar after the show for a bit before finally heading home and falling unconscious.

Sunday I did GR work in the morning and early afternoon. Then it was off with Nik to see Japanese psychological thriller Retribution as part of the Seattle International Film Festival. I gave it a 3 of 5 in the voting. It was interesting but slow-paced and not quite as thrilling as we had hoped. We ran into John, Jenny, and Jim at the movie and had dinner with them at Trader Vic’s, which I doubt I’ll ever go back to. Then it was off to pick up Kate and go see another SIFF film, the anime TEKKONKINKREET. This visually beautiful film was better than Retribution (I gave it 4 of 5) but pretty wacky. It was a little to dark in spots for Miss Kate, who said it wasn’t her kind of anime.

Woke up this morning to read the news about Gleemax. This is pretty much what I expected and is an interesting idea, but the name is godawful. If this site is so important, picking something more accessible than an old inside joke would have been a much better idea in my opinion.

During college I had this terrible job one summer at the national headquarters of the Boys and Girls Clubs of America, right across the street from the UN in NYC. I was hired as a file clerk. I thought there might be some variety in the job, but after the first week it was clear that I was mistaken. I was expected to file 8 hours a day and the obsessive woman I worked for made sure there was always more to file. She kept every note, invitation, memo, and brochure that crossed her desk. The day I started, there was a pile of papers about 3 feet high on my desk to be filed. When I quit 3 months later the pile was about the same size despite endless hours of work.

One day I ran across a series of articles from the Washington Post about the not so stellar record that various youth groups had in dealing with pedophiles. They talked about how pedophiles were attracted to groups like the Boy Scouts because it gave them easy access to young people and put them in positions of control. For decades most youth organizations not only ignored the problem, they swept countless incidents under the rug. This allowed some predators to leave one area, move to a new location, and start a new youth group or troop and do it all again. The Boy Scouts didn’t start doing background checks on adult volunteers until 2003.

I remembered those articles today when reading the Seattle Weekly, one the city’s free newspapers. It had a big article about the trials and tribulations of a poor guy who was repeatedly raped by his Boy Scout troop leader (and this after his sister was murdered by the Green River killer). The twist was that both victimizer and victim were members of the Mormon Church. Apparently the Boy Scouts are an officially program within the church and the Mormons are now one of the largest chartering groups of scouts in the US.

The article talked about how the Mormon Church is perceived to have a better handle on the problems of child abuse than the Roman Catholic Church, but suggested that the picture isn’t as rosy as it might seem. While relating the story of one victim in detail, it also touches on other similar cases. Imagine my surprise when I read this one:

“In one of the most bizarre cases, a Mormon Scoutmaster in Sierra Vista, Ariz., David James Borg, invented a Dungeons & Dragons game to entice at least five prepubescent boys into having sex during spelunking expeditions. ‘His characters used enlarged penises as weapons, and sometimes the boys’ characters had to cut off the penis of opposing characters, eat it, etc,’ wrote a Scouts official in a 1988 internal report. ‘In other words, what other pedophiles do with pornography, in tearing down in inhibitions, Borg did with D&D.;’ The official noted that Borg had previously been caught in bed with an underage boy in New Jersey, but because at the time ‘the church apparently [had] no ‘Confidential File’ it was easy for him to move to Sierra Vista and become involved with the youth program in that new ward.'”

Wow. Worst D&D; Game Ever! And how weird is it that the guy’s name was Borg? Did he tell the kids that they would be assimilated? In any case something tells me this anecdote did not make it into 30 Years of Adventure: A Celebration of Dungeons & Dragons.

It was the 1981 Halloween show of Saturday Night Live. Fear, a punk band from California, was set to be the musical guest. Ian MacKaye, of Minor Threat and Fugazi fame, was one of the punks brought in to dance during the performance. He relates the strange story of how it happened:

“At eight in the morning, some point in October, I got a call. I was driving a newspaper truck for The Washington Post at the time, so eight in the morning was brutal. It was Lorne Michaels’ office, Lorne Michaels being the producer of “Saturday Night Live,” and I get this woman, “Lorne Michaels’ office, please hold.” I was completely delirious. Lorne Michaels gets on the phone – “Hi, Ian, it’s Lorne Michaels of ‘Saturday Night Live,’ I’m calling you because I got your number from John Belushi. He says that you might be able to get some dancers up here ’cause we want to have Fear on the show.” I was completely baffled by this. “Pardon me?” “Hold on a second.” John Belushi gets on the phone and he says, “This is John Belushi. I’m a big fan of Fear’s. I made a deal with ‘Saturday Night Live’ that I would make a cameo appearance on the show if they’d let Fear play. I got your number from Penelope Spheeris, who did ‘Decline of Western Civilization’ and she said that you guys, Washington DC punk rock kids, know how to dance. I want to get you guys to come up to the show.” It was worked out that we could all arrive at the Rockefeller Center where “Saturday Night Live” was being filmed. The password to get in was “Ian MacKaye.” We went up the day before. The Misfits played with The Necros at the Ukrainian hall, I think, so all of the Detroit people were there, like Tesco Vee and Cory Rusk from the Necros and all the Touch and Go people and a bunch of DC people – 15 to 20 of us came up from DC. Henry [Rollins] was gone. He was living in LA at this point. So we went to the show. During the dress rehearsal, a camera got knocked over. We were dancing and they were very angry with us and said that they were going to not let us do it then Belushi really put his foot down and insisted on it. So, during the actual set itself, they let us come out again. If you watch the show. . . before they go to commercial, they always go to this jack-o-lantern. This carved pumpkin. If you watched it during the song, you’ll see one of our guys, this guy named Bill MacKenzie, coming out holding the pumpkin above his head because he’s just getting ready to smash it. And that’s when they cut it off. They kicked us out and locked us out for two hours. We were locked in a room because they were so angry with us about the behavior. . . They said they were going to sue us and have us arrested for damages. There was so much hype about that. The New York Post reported half a million dollars worth of damages. It was nothing. It was a plastic clip that got broken. It was a very interesting experience and I realized how completely unnatural it is for a band to be on a television show – particularly a punk band – that kind of has a momentum to suddenly be expected to immediately jump into a song in that type of setting. It was very weird. Largely unpleasant. Made me realize that’s not something I’m interested in doing.”

This incident became notorious in punk rock circles and as Ian notes that was a big media freakout. I’ve scanned SNL reruns for years, hoping they might one day repeat the episode. It has never been shown again. Thanks to the wonders of the internet though, footage of one of the songs they performed (“New York’s Alright If You Like Saxophones”) can now be seen here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0tA2R12OBY

As you can see here, and in the documentary Decline of Western Civilization, Fear was one of those bands that liked pissing people off. I saw them play at CBGB in the early 90s and frontman Lee Ving mercilessly mocked the crowd throughout their set. Strangely enough Ving attempted an acting career in Hollywood. His most notable role is Mr. Body in the film Clue.

So Flying Lab is right across the street from the Metropolitan Market, which is a high end grocery full of all kinds of tasty stuff. Today Tynes was over there and discovered that Armandino Batali, the proprietor of the legendary Seattle foodie mecca Salumi (and father of Mario), was going to be appearing for several hours. John, Jess, and I had made a lunch pilgrimage to Salumi a couple of months back, waiting in line for an hour for a chance to sample Batali’s famous salamis. Today Jess and I gathered up a bunch of folks from our department and headed across the street. I thought it might be crowded at 5 but we just walked right up. Armandino had brought seven or so different kinds of salami and he encouraged us to try them all. You could tell this was his passion and he wanted to share it with people. Since we descended in a bunch, he was curious where we had come from. I explained we worked across the street and were publishing a pirate computer game. We chit chatted for a few minutes and he was a genial and pleasant guy. I picked up some of the mole salami, which is made with chocolate and is outrageously good. He also let us sample a new salami made with anise that Salumi is debuting in a couple of weeks. I wasn’t sure about meat and anise together, but it too was delicious. Here’s a guy that really knows his craft. That was a nice (and tasty) way to end the work week.

Before gaming last night Rick and I stopped in at Games & Gizmos in Redmond. He wanted to pick up the rulebook and first army book for AT-43, the latest miniatures game from Rackham. Rick is a sucker for good art and graphic design and French game companies tend to excel in those areas. I flipped through the books and indeed they are very pretty. And yet I still hesitate to give AT-43 a try. I chalk this up to two things. First, Rackham’s history of English-language products is spotty at best. A couple of years ago I made a point of going to their GenCon booth to buy Confrontation, 3rd edition. At last, I thought, all the Confrontation rules in one beautiful hardback. I put it in my carryon so I could read it on the flight back to Seattle. I got about 30 pages in before the terrible translation made me put the book down. It was clear that the translator was not a native English speaker and it showed. Last GenCon I passed on buying the even more beautiful Cadwallon game after that experience. I figured I’d wait for reviews to come in and sure enough when they did a similar problem was identified.

The other thing makes me hesitate is the miniatures themselves. They look nice enough and are much better than many pre-painted minis. Non-collectibility is also a huge plus in my book. I have yet to see the army that is so cool looking that I have to have it though. Most of the figs are very similar to 40K ranges like the Imperial Guard and Necrons. The AT-43 walkers are nice because plastic construction means they can be nice and big. The apes in power armor are also intriguing but there don’t seem to be many released yet. I suppose it must also be said that I need another miniatures game like I need another D&D; book full of feats and prestige classes. So until I hear more about the translation and see an army that really appeals to me, I’ll be holding back on investing in AT-43. And hell, I still have Panzer IVHs and Nebelwerfers to assemble and I’ve been meaning to do that for months.

Next week GR is releasing a card game called Walk the Plank. It’s our first since Torches & Pitchforks and whereas T&P; was definitely a gamer’s game this is one you can pull out and play with your non-gamer friends and family. If you check out the Walk the Plank page of our website, you can download the complete rules and see a cool preview that shows you how the art evolved from sketches to finished pieces. You can also see pictures of the finished game.

http://greenronin.com/card_board/walk_the_plank.php

With pirate mania being at its height right now, we’re hoping Walk the Plank benefits. It’s a fun game and very quick to play (as in you can play a whole game in less than 10 minutes). Make your friends Walk the Plank today!

My friends Kim and Chris have been doing this cable access show called Free NY since 1994. I haven’t seen an episode since I left NY but it seems like the focus of the show has got more political over time. In the early days though Kim and Chris would bring their camera to game night at my old place in Brooklyn. They’d record as pre-game conversations and those would become episodes. Topics ranged all over the place. I remember coming home from work one night to find the roundtable in full swing. They turned the camera on me and said, “What do you think about Kurt Cobain’s suicide today?” I replied, “Well, that’s what he gets for selling out.” A wee bit harsh, eh?

One day in 1995 they decided to do a kiwi strawberry episode. They got 25 odd beverages and we did a blind taste test. I had never had so much kiwi strawberry stuff in my life. Until they did a follow-up episode that is, where we put the previous winner (Snapple’s KS iced tea as I recall) against a field of new contenders. Since those shows I have had kiwi strawberry beverages only a handful of times. When I see them in stores, I never buy them, nor crave them. It seems drinking that much of the stuff in such a short period of time overloaded my system and it never recovered. It was thus quite a surprise when I pulled a random vitamin water out of the fridge this morning and discovered it was kiwi strawberry. I think I’m good for another few years.

So Wizards of the Coast has apparently received a patent on constructible strategy games. These are games that use punch-out pieces that you assemble into a larger model like a ship or a robot. If you pay attention to games, you may be scratching your head right about now. Wizards has never released a game like this, while Wizkids has a quite popular one in Pirates of the Spanish Main. So what gives? Well, it’s a long and strange story.

I can’t say precisely when those punch out constructible toys first came to market, but I do know that Z-Cardz were on sale by the late 90s. In 2003 Z-Cardz released a game (Z-Cardz: the Game) sold in starters and boosters. As far as I know this was the first “constructible strategy game” on the market. At around this time WotC was also working a project called Punch Bots. This was one of many projects inside WotC that went through a certain amount of development and then got shelved. Punch Bots is the basis of WotC’s patent claim.

In 2004 Wizkids released Pirates of the Spanish Main and it was a big hit in the hobby market. A series of expansions followed, as well as an attempt (Rocketmen) to do something similar for scifi. The following year Pirates won a Vanguard Award at the Origins Awards. This struck me as a bit odd, as Pirates was not the pioneering game of this type. It was far more successful than Z-Cardz certainly, but that’s not really what the Vanguard Award is supposed to be about.

Back in February Wizkids muddied the pool further by announcing the Star Wars Pocketmodel Trading Card Game. This seems to be another constructible strategy game but presumably for licensing reasons it’s being called a TCG. Wizards of the Coast, which has most of the hobby game rights for Star Wars, was likely not pleased by this turn of events. WotC then announced that that they were doing a CSG of their own based on the Transformers (a Hasbro property). That’s coming out this summer and it will be the first time WotC has actually released a game of this type.

So now there’s a weird situation where no one remembers the actual pioneer in this category, but the company with the most popular games of this type is now under threat from a company that has yet to actually release one. I must say I find the patenting a little dubious. The punch out cards existed long before WotC filed, so really they are saying that they invented the idea of attaching a collectible business model game to them. Which may not even be true, depending on the development history of the Z-Cardz game. In the end the whole thing seems like a pissing match between WotC and Wizkids, reminiscent of the Decipher/WotC dogfight that landed the Star Wars license with WotC in the first place.