Author: Jason

Man vs Wife: Dungeon!

Gaming, Man vs Wife

Man vs WifeDungeon!, originally released by TSR, simulates some of the aspects of Dungeons & Dragons. You play a character and roam through a dungeon killing monsters for treasure. It came out in 1975, a year after D&D, and has been revised several times. There is yet another version coming out in October, but the copy I own is the 1989 version called “New Dungeon” because it revamped the classes.

Dungeon! - The Box
It's a little on the nose... Dungeon... Dragon... subtle this is not.

In the basic version we play first, everyone is a warrior. (Wife: I want to be the female.) Fine, I’ll be… uh.. the dwarf, I guess. They both look like dwarves, which is funny because Dwarf is one of the advanced classes. Whatever. Warriors get to move up to 5 spaces each turn. (Wife: We don’t roll?) Not according to the box rules, but there are house rules where you roll to move. (Wife: Then what are the dice for?) I’ll get to that. Back to the moving. You can go up to 5 spaces, but if you enter a room you have to stop and fight and end your turn, even if it’s less than 5 spaces. If you want to go through a secret door, the dashed lines (Wife: I was just about to ask that.), you have to roll a die. Warriors open secret doors on a 1 or a 2. If you fail, your turn ends. If you fail three times, on the fourth you automatically find the secret door and can go through it. (Wife: That’s nice.) Yeah, a reward for just wasting three entire turns doing nothing.

When it comes to combat, monster cards have six numbers on them, and warriors use the red one. You roll both dice and try to get equal to or higher than the number. (Wife: What are the other numbers for?) The other classes and spells. If you beat a monster in a room, you get a treasure of the appropriate level. If you beat a monster in a chamber, you get no treasure. (Wife: Poor chamber monsters.) The board is laid out with rooms of six different levels of difficulty, with the higher levels getting the best treasures.

There are special treasures too. Secret Door cards let you walk through secret doors without rolling. ESP Medallions let you see monsters before you decide to fight them. Crystal Balls let you look at the monster and treasure of any room on the board. And Magic Swords give you a bonus to fighting. (Wife: How much?) There are four +1 swords and one +2 sword. (Wife: Do they stack?) No.

Under the basic rules, warriors need 30,000 gold worth of treasure to win. You have to adventure out, defeat monsters, collect treasures and return to the Main Staircase. First one to do that wins. When you play with more people, you get in each other’s way a lot, which drags out the game. With just two of us, she runs for the level 1 rooms and I head for level 4. (Wife: What?) See, I’ve played this game before (Wife: Cheater!) and I know that while it’s easy to fight level 1 and 2 monsters, many of whom need a 3 or even a 2 – you can’t roll less than 2 on two dice – to defeat, there is a disproportionate jump in difficulty from level 4 to level 5 in that level 5 is much harder than level 4, and level 4 is still statistically favorable to win while earning more valuable treasures. (Wife: Cheater! Cheater!) I know. I take a pretty quick lead, but I forgot two things. First, getting a secret door card is much easier in the lower level rooms, as is a magic sword. Second, if you go down the wrong hall to level 4, you end up having to detour through level 5 or take the long way around. (Wife: You went the wrong way?) I went the wrong way.

So, she racks up a pile of treasure, with Secret Door cards and magic swords, and while I have a pile of money I step into a level 5 room that’s too difficult. According to the rules, when you don’t kill a monster on the first attack, another player rolls for the monster and then you consult the damage table to see what the monster does to you. The results range from the monster missing and nothing happening, to dropping treasure, to being killed. (Wife: Are you dead?) She rolls a 3, so I’m not dead, but I have to drop half of my treasure and return to the Main Staircase. She’s now winning. (Wife: I’m winning!) And basically I’m screwed. My choices are to either go back to where I lost and try to reclaim my treasure and hope the next couple rooms give me enough to win, or take the loss and head for the easier rooms. The problem with the second option is that she’s been clearing out, and will continue to clear out, those rooms, so it’s a long wasted run to finally get something worthwhile. I decide to go get my stuff. (Wife: Revenge!) Revenge!

She wins. (Wife: I win!)

Having played out the basic game rather quickly, I propose we play again. Advanced this time. (Wife: You are just trying to steal my victory.) No, really, we should just play another variant. (Wife: Advanced is too complicated.) You could play a warrior again. (Wife: And you would play what?) A wizard. (Wife: Why?) Just to be different. (Wife: No, really, why?) I like wizards. (Wife: I’m not playing if you don’t tell me.) I put on my robe and hat. (Wife: Just tell me!) Fine! Because with spells you can defeat level 6 monsters really easy. (Wife: Cheater!) Whatever. We’ll both play warriors again, but we’ll clear the dungeon entirely and the winner is the one with the most treasure at the end. (Wife: Better.)

I’m not going to bore you with the details, because it was a very long game, but she won. (Wife: I win!) I avoided my earlier mistakes, but I just lost out on luck. She ended the game with literally all the Magic Swords (Wife: That don’t stack! Lame!) and most of the other special treasure cards. I didn’t get a Secret Door card until we were pushing into level 5. I also want to avoid the details because this game got really ugly. Remember that rule about having another player roll for the monsters? I recommend instead allowing the player to roll for their own damage. It’ll prevent players from being angry at other players and instead be angry at the dice. Nothing makes you hate another player quite as much as them rolling a 2 and you having to drop ALL your treasure and return to the Main Staircase. (Wife: Yeah! Screw that!) Honestly, we could have played the game a little more cutthroat, but tended to let the other get their own treasure back rather than go steal it after it was dropped.

I’m curious if the new version coming out this fall will have better or different rules. No matter what, if we ever play this again (Wife: Never!) it will be after a bunch of research on house rules that help the game be more fun.

Despite my lack of winning, I still like Dungeon! Though I fully admit that part of it is nostalgia. Back in the day (Wife: Here we go…) some of my gaming groups would use the board and modified rules along with real D&D characters. It was easier than drawing out a random dungeon map. We would just toss down the board, pick a chamber to be the entrance and start exploring. In my opinion, the game is worth owning for that alone.

Anyway…

Man, 0. Wife, 7.

(Wife: I…) Just don’t.

Vi Hart

Stuff on the Net

Lots of people have trouble understanding math. It is my belief that this is largely because of the manner in which it is taught in school. I don’t want to come down too much on teachers, because teachers are awesome, but I think they are often constricted by curriculum and the result is often dry lectures that don’t excite the minds of their students. That and many teachers, for whatever reason, try too hard to stick to general theories without providing enough concrete real world examples to which their students can relate.

Vi Hart has, at the time of this post, 45 videos online that tackle various mathematical concepts in fun ways. I’ve really enjoyed them, despite the fact that as a former math major in college I already know most of this stuff. Anyway, for this week’s Saturday Morning Cartoon, I chose the above to share with you, a little bit of math inspired doodle based music by Vi.

Be sure to check out the rest of the videos on her channel. Even if you’ve previously hated math, I think you’ll find something to enjoy there.

Rabbit

Writing

The dead began to rise, and the rest descended into chaos. In the after, humanity returned to an oral history. Stories told by campfire and candlelight, to ward off the dark.

Rabbit

Molly, her mother and a group of others had stumbled upon the warehouse. It was like a dream. Shelf after shelf, aisle after aisle of food and supplies tucked away in this nondescript little building. It did not appear guarded, but surely something like this was planned and whoever planned it would return. So rather than stay in the little warehouse, they cleared out an apartment building a few blocks away that gave them a clear view of the stock of goods.

The group worked together, slowly clearing other nearby buildings, creating an intricate maze of pathways, bridges and ladders, from building to building leading from their chosen home to the warehouse. Each bridge, each ladder or swing, could be pulled up or disabled from either side and hidden, lest they giveaway their safe living to anyone passing through with ill intentions. But also they made sure not to do anything that drew attention to the warehouse itself. They always entered from the roof, and while they barred the ground level doors from the inside, they made no attempt to obscure any of them from the outside or to chain them or lock them with visible locks. The warehouse was made to simply look uninteresting, just as it was back when they almost passed it by.

They limited their trips to the store of supplies, carrying as much as they could back to their apartment homes, but never so much as to make them slow when the world had become a place where quickness was most precious. A few days worth was all they could bring safely, and so they had to return every few days to get more.

[ read the whole story ]

 

Little League, and FCBD

Stuff on the Net

These week’s Saturday Morning Cartoon isn’t a cartoon at all, it’s a comic.

Be sure to read it from the start. It’s only up to 37 strips so far, and it is awesome. Once you are caught up, follow it on tumblr to stay up to date.

Today is Free Comic Book Day. I hope you are reading this on your phone from your local comic book shop, or after you’ve gotten home from there. What? You don’t have a local comic book shop? Use the locator and find one, and go. I don’t go as often as I would like, but in my youth I went to Dr. No’s every week. These days I don’t have the disposable income to keep up with a bunch of monthly titles and stick mostly to trades, but I met some very nice and very awesome people through the comic book shop. It’s because of them that I went to my first Dragon*Con. Anyway, today is a good day to go out and support them.

Star Wars Day

Random Thoughts, Stuff on the Net, Writing

Caution: Children at PlayMay the 4th be with you.

Yeah, it’s corny – but sometimes being corny is the heart and soul of being a geek. I’m not often big on celebrating Star Wars Day, mostly because if you held a gun to my head and forced me to choose I’d have to pick Star Trek in the Star Series debate. The science just worked for me a little better than the mysticism.

Amazon is celebrating by having Star Wars: The Complete Saga (Episodes I-VI) on Blu-ray for 44% off. $79 for 9 discs – 6 movies and a whole mess of extras. Sure, you get the Very Special Re-re-edited Editions for the originals, but still – very cool.

As for me, I’m going to use this day to drag out something I wrote 13 years ago. I was sitting in the theater, not yet full disappointed in the new Star Wars prequel I was watching at the midnight showing, and there was a scene that sparked something in my brain. I went home that night and sketched out a quick idea. It took a few weeks to flesh it out, mostly because I needed the Internet to get the images from the movie I needed. I’m certain some were promotional while others were grabbed from pirated copies of the film. But I finally slapped it together and Card Wars: The Phantom Balance was born. Take a look. I’ll wait.

It’s funnier if you remember the Visa Card commercials that I’m parodying. Do versions of those even air anymore? I don’t watch enough commercials to know.

I remember at the time really being excited about that, because the movie had been a let down. It isn’t a bad movie, but the prequels represented a large series of broken promises to fans of the original. So many bits and pieces, and large plot elements, contradict things we were told in the 1977, 1980 and 1983 films. I’m not going to spend time pointing them out, just go Google “star wars inconsistencies” and you’ll get lots of results. Some are silly nitpicks, and still others can be explained away, but there are plenty that are slaps in the face. So, I was excited because I felt like, at least for myself, I had salvaged something. The movie was broken, but at least I was inspired to do something creative.

Over time, I’ve come to accept the movies in their imperfect forms. I can enjoy them, even if I still feel a twinge of sadness at how awesome it could have been if Lucas had simply accepted his own work as cannon and written within those constraints. We’ll never know…

In the meantime, if you haven’t seen it yet, there is an awesome fan made version of the original Star Wars film. Random groups of people signed up to make their own versions of 15 second segments of the movie which was then edited together. The result is worth watching.

Anyway… Enjoy your Star Wars Day.

Man vs Wife: Sorry!

Gaming, Man vs Wife

Man vs WifeSorry! by Parker Brothers, since 1934, is a cross and circle game. Which is another way to say a racing game, whose object is to move your pieces around the board from start to finish before the other players do the same. It’s also billed as “The game of sweet revenge”, which is a poetic way to say “The game of making the other players furious and hate you”.

The game comes with a board, sixteen game pieces in four groups of four, and a stack of cards. Unlike some other racing games, Sorry! uses cards drawn to do movement rather than dice, which ultimately is probably a good thing since throwing dice around in a game that can anger you so much is not the best idea in the world. (Wife: I love playing Sorry!) I’m pretty sure you don’t. (Wife: You’re wrong.) Okay, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Sorry
The game of sweet reven... you know what?! Eat me!

For our 2 player game, we take up Blue and Green for our colors so that we are opposite each other. (Wife: Picking colors next to each other wouldn’t have been fair.) Because if given the choice I’d choose the color behind you. (Wife: Then I’d pick the color behind you.) And I’d switch colors. (Wife: Me too.) And we’d probably start our first argument before a single card had been drawn. (Wife: Oh, this is that game!) Wait, it’ll get worse.

One of the single most annoying rules of Sorry! is that you have to draw either a 1 or a 2 to move a piece out of your Start circle. (Wife: You can also use a Sorry! card to take the place of an opponent’s piece, bumping their piece back to Start.) Right, but in the beginning, it takes a while. We didn’t use the head start rules that puts a single piece outside Start to start, so we spend a lot of time just trying to get pieces out of Start. (Wife: You are exaggerating. It didn’t take that long.) I disagree. It took too long, that’s not a specific amount of time, it’s just too long.

The movement cards in the game are the following:

  • 1 – move a piece out of Start, or move a piece forward one space.
  • 2 – move a piece out of Start, or move a piece forward two spaces. Draw another card.
  • 3 – move a piece forward three spaces.
  • 4 – move a piece backward four spaces.
  • 5 – move a piece forward five spaces.
  • 7 – move a piece forward seven spaces, or split the seven moves between two pieces. You cannot use this to move a piece from Start and must you all seven moves or none of them.
  • 8 – move a piece forward eight spaces.
  • 10 – move a piece forward ten spaces, or move a piece backward one space. If you cannot move forward ten, you must move backward one.
  • 11 – move a piece forward eleven spaces, or swap places with an opponent’s piece. If you cannot move forward eleven, you are not forced to swap places.
  • 12 – move a piece forward twelves space.
  • Sorry! – move a piece from your Start to a space occupied by an opponent’s piece, bumping them back to their Start.

Any time your move ends your piece on the same spot as an opponent’s piece, you bump them back to Start. The board also has slides on it. If you end a movement on the top of a slide, you move to the bottom of the slide, bumping all pieces in the way back to Start. (Wife: That’s a lot of bumping people back to Start.) Indeed. (Wife: I think perhaps I only LIKED playing Sorry!, not loved it.) See, I was right. (Wife: I guess it has to happen from time to time.) Wait, it’ll get worse.

So, we begin drawing cards, finally getting some pieces out on the board and moving them around. She get’s the first Sorry! card. (Wife: Hah!) I get the first eleven, which I use to swap places. (Wife: Why did you move your piece backwards?) Because it moves your piece past the Safe Zone and you have to go all the way around again. (Wife: What?! You suck!) And then we spend the next hour making each other angry by bumping each other back to Start again and again, using Sorry! cards and slides and screwing each other over. (Wife: I’m pretty sure I don’t like this game at all.) See? (Wife: Don’t be smug.)

One of the best strategies in the game is to get a piece out of Start and then get a 4, move that piece backwards past the entry to the Safe Zone, and then move forward into the Safe Zone. It saves you from having to go around the board. (Wife: I did that.) I know. (Wife: Several times.) I know. You essentially want to get your pieces into the Safe Zone as fast as possible because once there you can’t be bumped back to Start.

With as much anger and spite as the game generates during play, it ends with a whimper. Eventually you end up with both people having only one or two pieces still in play, and because you have to move to the Finish on an exact count, and no one has any pieces in Start, and everyone’s remaining pieces are in the Safe Zone anyway, you wind up drawing cards over and over, doing nothing, waiting for the ones, twos and threes that you need to get to that final space. Or maybe you get lucky, get a seven and are able to split it between two pieces and get one or both in. By the time she wins (Wife: I win!) we’ve calmed down, our emotions mostly spent.

Somehow, I have fond memories of playing this game as a kid. (Wife: Me too.) And I think it’s because my parents let me win and never took revenge on me when they could avoid it. (Wife: Me too.) I think it’s important that people get a proper exposure to Sorry! and that includes hating it. (Wife: We may never play this again.) Until we can secretly gang up on another player. (Wife: Woohoo! High five!) You know it!

My recommendation: Never ever EVER play Sorry! with 2 players. Play with 4, always 4. There is so much revenging on other players in a game of Sorry! that if you are forced to always do so to the same person, it just makes for bad feelings. You need to be able to spread the revenge around a bit.

Anyway…

Man, 0. Wife, 6.

(Wife: I’m not.) Not what? (Wife: I’m not “Sorry!” Mwahahaha! I win!) I have created a monster…

Outdoor F*$%ing

Stuff on the Net

Jonathan Coulton has the perfect song to celebrate today. Unless your boss and coworkers are huge Coulton fans, this is entirely not safe for work.

Coincidentally, today also begins the “Burn Ban” in Georgia. So, stop the burning of your yard trash and satisfy the burning of your loins.

RenFest 2012

Pictures, Random Thoughts

The Georgia Renaissance Festival is pretty much the same every year. The bird show might have different birds, and the Tortuga Twins may have a few new jokes, and the various merchants may be selling a few new trinkets, but really it’s the same every year.

If you know me, then you know why I enjoy the fair so much despite the fact that little changes in the event itself, it’s because the crowd is always in flux. I love watching people, and places such as the RenFest are fantastic for seeing a wide variety of people. Better still, unlike going to some place like a mall or a concert, you are catching most of these people out of their usual element. The crowd ranges from people flaunting their particular, sometimes peculiar, interests to those first encountering the former.

The MMORPG Track went down to the Georgia RenFest yesterday, and as always I wish I’d taken more pictures. In fact, the only ones I snapped were the ones I took just outside the gate.

However, this is something I can rectify, because I’m fairly certain we’ll be going back in a couple or three weeks.

Another advantage to going more than once is that on your first trip down, you can browse without the intention to buy. And while you might potentially risk losing out on a particular unique items by holding off buying, you also give yourself the opportunity to stew on the purchase and decide if you really want it.

One thing I did notice this year is that there appeared to be a few more artisans at the festival. A couple of the people who just had racks of things for sale have been replaced with people who have racks of things for sale and also can demonstrate their art while they sell. Obviously, things such as paintings and tapestry don’t lend themselves to this, but it’s nice to see the potter at the wheel crafting another item than to just see the potter behind the counter collecting money. I like this trend, and hope it continues.

All in all, it was a good seven hours spent at the Renaissance Festival, and I look forward to going again, this year and in the years to come. Huzzah!

The Guild – Season One

Stuff on the Net

If you’ve seen The Guild before, watch this with the annotations turned on to enhance the awesome. If you haven’t seen The Guild before, turn off the annotations, sit back and enjoy it edited together as one movie instead of broken into episodes – then watch it again later with the annotations.

Save Yourself, Save the World

Random Thoughts

RecycleI’m a little late for my semi-annual plea. I missed Earth Day by about 5 days, or 371 days if you count the fact that I didn’t post last year…

Anyway, previously I’ve posted about services that help you eliminate junk mail. Unfortunately, those sites are all dead now, probably because they set their fees too low to be successful in the long-term. 41pounds.org, however, has managed to stick around. I can’t vouch for their specific service, but I can say that taking advantage of one of these services that will help get you off mailing lists is pretty awesome. They are currently running a special for $24 to cover every adult in your household for 5 years. $4.80 per year to stop most junk mail. Totally worth it in my opinion.

I also haven’t gotten a phone book in over two years thanks to their new opt-out policies. Yay!

We’ve continued the “reduce, reuse, recycle” mantra around the house. We generate about a bag of trash every two weeks or so, and I’ve been working harder to turn off unused electronics. I’ve gone 100% over to electronic billing, except for medical bills – hospitals insist not only on paper bills, but on generating several copies of every bill, and every bill contains the full accounting of the charges and payments. It’s a miracle that they allow me to pay online.

Both the wife and I have gotten Kindles, her the Fire and me the basic model. We’ve switched over to buying most new books in eBook form. I doubt I’ll ever buy comics or graphic novels that way, at least not until there is a cheap high quality 14 inch tablet that can view them full size without zooming or going panel to panel. And with two-page splashes the way they are, a 28 inch tablet is just impractical.

Most importantly though, and the intent of the title of this post, is that most of our efforts have actually been to save money. The eBooks are cheaper than they physical counterparts most of the time (especially when you read classics and keep an eye out for deals), electronic billing means so buying stamps and envelopes, keeping electronics off drops the power bills, drinking water saves on groceries, less junk mail means less trash bags, and so on and so on. Nothing we’ve done was specifically to save the planet. It was all done to save us money, and the side benefit is it just happens to be better for the world (or at least our continued ability to live in it) in the long run.

Now, if I could just figure out a way to afford solar panels and an electric car…