Waiting for Brawl

Two big news items for today.

1. The inaugural DC Photowalk was held yesterday in Adams Morgan, Washington DC. The walk was held by Jeff Revell of PhotoWalkPro. Despite easy access to DC and a familiarity with the area the walk was held in; I missed it, so by natural law Scott Kelby and Matt Kloskowski (the “photoshop guys” who I watch all the time and would love to meet) flew up from Florida to attend and walk with everyone. I’m an idiot.

2. Super Smash Bros Brawl came out for the Nintendo Wii at midnight last night. See picture above. This was a big gaming event if you love Nintendo.

People always ask me, “hey, what board games should I play?” Not really, but my friends and I have aquired quite a number of games that I feel are far above and beyond the likes of trivial pursuit, life, monopoly and the like. And I felt I should share them with all of you. If you are looking for some more interesting games to play with friends, check these out. Especially if you have a kid… these games take some thought! I think all of these are German designed games; most good thinking games seem to come from Germany for some reason. If you’d like to buy these games, check out online stores like FunAgain.

1. Carcassonne - My personal favorite. Place tiles together in turns to make a picture of a medieval town. The way you place your tiles and pieces will affect your score. Build cities, roads, monasteries, and more. Place your knights, farmers and builders on the city you are creating, piece by piece. Start with the basic game. There are many expansions, but I only recommend “Traders and Builders” as well as “Inns and Cathedrals” These two expansions really enhance the core game without making things a hellish nightmare of complexity. The rules can be a touch confusing the first time, but there are many great web sites with clarification available.

2. Settlers of Catan - A great game that is easy to learn. I can also recommend the cities and knights expansion which adds some interesting elements after you’ve mastered the basic game. This game is about building settlements and cities on an island nation for points. You can either make a pre-discovered map or allow exploration and discovery of tiles as roads are built towards them. A wonderful game with many ways to play… enjoyed by everyone we have played it with.

3. Puerto Rico - This is a fairly simple game to learn where you take different roles such as builder, prospector, trader, captain, etc each turn to produce crops and construct buildings. This is a great game with a lot of strategic management. Each player’s turn directly affects you, so the game stays lively. Grow sugar, corn, indigo and coffee and then ship them out for points or money in order to be the fastest to settle Puerto Rico! There are 3 ways to win the game and the strategy element is sharp. This game is uncluttered by tons of expansions like some of the others.

Try these out if you’re looking for something new and deeper than traditional American board games.

* This is a legacy post from my old blog, which I have re-posted with an edited timestamp to reflect the original date.

It was with great pleasure that my friend Jared and I went to see Richard Garriott “Lord British” speak at GWU tonight about game design. We are long time RPG genre fans and also Lord British fans in general. He’s such a kooky guy (in a good way.) He is a household name around here, where we frequently refer to Richard Garriott’s sofa, Richard Garriott’s desk, Richard Garriott’s cereal, etc. Lately you’ve probably heard of his latest massive online game Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa which released this year. His accomplishments include essentially creating the computer role playing game genre, building the first successful massive online game (Ultima Online) and owning, as well as living in, his own castle with secret passages and trap doors throughout.

Garriott had been experimenting with creating games for Teletype machines on paper tape (held in his hand above is an original copy) as a teenager. Players would make a move and wait for the machine to type the next line, 40 characters at a time. He did this for entertainment and threw most of the tapes away, preferring to create new games rather than edit old ones. This philosophy has carried over into his long game design career.

Richard was an avid pen-and-paper gamer. He even chose to write about his level 26 wizard, Lord British, for an English paper in junior high school (above.) This later became the story for his video game. 19 years old and working at a computer store, Garriott spent his nights writing code on his personal Apple II computer and created the computer role playing game Akalabeth.

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* This is a legacy post from my old blog, which I have re-posted with an edited timestamp to reflect the original date.

In case you don’t follow these sorts of things, the chinese government a little while back decided that its people are playing video games too much. They enacted a ban on too many hours of online gaming. Players would be warned by the game service after a few hours that experience points would be cut in half and, if they continued to play another hour or two, reduced to nothing.

Unfortunately, many game companies have yet to implement the less-than-popular feature. The government has responded by sending out letters a couple of days ago that state the game service will be shut down and internet access cut off if they do not implement the time limits within a certain period. Ahh… communism.