Author: Jason

Man vs Wife: Guillotine

Gaming, Man vs Wife

Man vs WifeGuillotine was designed by Paul Peterson for Wizards of the Coast. The tag line for the game is “The revolutionary card game where you win by getting a head.” It’s a wonderful play on words for a game about beheading nobles during the French Revolution. The game is for two to five players and claims to take around 30 minutes to play. The game comes with two decks of cards, a guillotine and instructions.

Guillotine
Don't lose your head.

The game plays thusly. The two decks – action cards and noble cards – are shuffled, you deal out five action cards to each player, and then lay out, beginning at the guillotine, a line of twelve nobles. On your turn, you can play an action card if you want, then you behead the first noble in line, and finally you draw an action card. You always draw an action card, even if you didn’t play one, and if you collect the head of a noble that contains special instructions you have to do whatever it says. The real meat of the game is in the first segment of your turn, because action cards contain all sorts of things, like rearranging the line, so you can use them to collect the best head you can or try to prevent your opponents from collecting them. Anyway, once the line is depleted, the day is over. You repeat the cycle for three days of beheading. There are no special rules for two player games.

We begin by shuffling the cards. (Wife: Does this guillotine actually do anything?) Of course. It cuts off heads. (Wife: How?) Oh, you mean does it actually DO anything… no, it doesn’t. It just marks the head of the line. (Wife: So it’s just a prop then.) Yes. I deal out the action cards and she deals out the line of nobles. She always wins (Wife: Hehe!), so she goes first. (Wife: So, I always get a guy from the front of the line?) Yes, unless the action card you play says you don’t.

She takes the early lead by causing King Louis to be discarded and collecting the Cardinal for 5 points. (Wife: I am winning!) I play Mass Confusion – which lets me re-deal the line – and then collect a Palace Guard. (Wife: He’s not worth any points.) Oh, but he is. The Palace Guard is worth as many points as you have Palace Guards. Since I have 1 now he’s only worth 1 point, but if I get a second one, both of them will be worth 2. (Wife: And if you get 3 then all of them will be worth 3.) Exactly! (Wife: You don’t have to be so excited when I understand math stuff.) Yes I do! (Wife: Just play.) It’s your turn. (Wife: Oh.)

So, play goes back and forth like that for day one, the last noble to meet the Guillotine is The Clown, and she fights desperately to not have to take him, until we realize that the action on his card says that if you collect him you get to give him to another player. (Wife: That’s you!) And that’s me. So I get The Clown, worth -2 points. (Wife: That’s MINUS two points.) And we deal out another 12 nobles for day two.

I said there weren’t special rules for two player games (Wife: Did you forget to tell me all the rules again?) and there aren’t, however a number of the action cards target an opponent which if you are playing with more than two players means something, but in two player it just means (Wife: You.) the other player.

I spend days two and three trying out various strategies (Wife: Strategy. Haha!) but she out plays me and when we total up the score she has 45 points to my 27. (Wife: I win!) Not so fast! Since the game only took about 25 minutes to play, we decide (Wife: You decide.) to play best two out of three. (Wife: You just want to steal my victory.) No, these are the rules. We play best of three for short games. (Wife: Whatever.)

For the second game, I give up on strategy. (Wife: You are learning, young Skywalker.) Did you just make a Star Wars joke? (Wife: Yes.) I’m so proud! (Wife: You have taught me well.) Okay, now you are just showing off. (Wife: Punch it, Chewy!) What? (Wife: I am your father.) Just stop. So, without strategy I do much better and score 42 points. She performs about the same (Wife: Because I never use strategy.) and gets 44 points. (Wife: I win!) Let the wookie win. (Wife: Did you just call me a wookie?!) No, I… it was a Star Wars joke. (Wife: Sure it was.) Seriously. (Wife: Whatever.)

From my brief experience with the game, I’ve determined that playing a long game is useless. This is definitely a game of instant gratification. Stick to playing cards that help you right now, or hurt your opponent right now. Trying to lay in wait and bide your time just results in you losing by a large margin. And once we get more familiar with the cards, the game will go much faster. (Wife: I like this game.) Because you won? (Wife: No, because it’s fun.) Good.

Anyway…

Man, 0. Wife, 5.

(Wife: I win! Five! In your face!)

Telltale Zombies

Gaming

Today marks the release of The Walking Dead video game by Telltale Games. Normally, I’m all over anything with zombies, but I’ve got such a large backlog of games right now that I’ll probably wait and pick this up later. And this isn’t even the whole thing. They’ll be releasing an episode a month, five episodes in all.

Anyway, check out the trailer:

I’ve enjoyed a few of Telltale’s other games, like the Sam & Max series that was released through GameTap, and I’ve heard good things about others. I’m looking forward to playing this at some point.

Ads

Random Thoughts, Site News

I’ve toyed with ads on the site from time to time. Right now in my RSS feed there are three ads – a Google block, a GameTap ad, and an Amazon ad for Kindle/eBooks. None of them are doing well, but that’s probably because I only have about 70 people who read that feed. On the site itself, I’ve put up Google blocks and Amazon ads, I had the GameTap ad for a little while and I’ve recently switched over to an Amazon search widget (if you use it when you start your Amazoning, I’ll get a tiny commission from anything you buy). I’ve even thought about throwing up a PayPal donation button, but I would feel terrible about that unless I have at least one semi-popular regular feature (see: Man vs Wife – no really, read it and if you enjoy it, share it with others – the more people who read it, the more I’m apt to write it).

This morning I read this article over at Pajiba. It’s worth reading to get an idea of what goes behind funding a popular website. Now, I’m not popular, but it does cost me around $200 a year to keep this place going – a cost I happily pay because I like having the outlet. Then again, I’m not very heavy on traffic. I don’t get 3+ million page views a month. I get about 800, but it is climbing as I post more regularly. I’m incredibly lucky if I earn $1 a month. My best month ever was when someone used my Amazon link and then went on to buy over $5,000 worth of electronics. No other month has even come close.

VisitChart
Pageviews vs Unique Visitors - Not many people come here, but some come twice a day.

However, one of the main things I wanted to point out from that article was the mention of ad-blockers. Yes, running ad-blocking is probably the safest thing you can do, since ads are an attack vector. However, when you do that, you are also dropping yourself from the “view” count for the ads on the sites you visit. Since the ads are how they afford to keep making the content, visiting a site with ad-block running is, essentially, a form of piracy. Now, I know that piracy is a big scary word that gets tossed around a lot, but it does have meaning and it applies here.

But what if a site has terrible ads full of viruses and not-safe-for-work content that I need to block?

Well, in my opinion, if the people who run a site don’t care enough to provide safe ads for their visitors, then you probably shouldn’t reward them with visits regardless of how awesome you think the site’s main content is, so just stop going. Find another site to get that content from, one that cares about its readers. And don’t forget to send in a nicely worded (don’t be profane) email to the offending website and let them know why you won’t be coming back – they just might decide to fix it.

If you enjoy a site for content, unblock it – most ad-blockers have the ability to “white list” sites to allow ads. Keep your anti-virus up to date, and if you get a warning from an ad, contact the site owner and let them know. They actually want to know because they don’t want to be infecting their readers with viruses. Another option is to browse using a browser like Google Chrome which maintains its own Flash, PDF and other things inside its sandbox and doesn’t allow access outside of the browser. And since Chrome automatically updates itself all the time, you don’t have to remember to check for new updates and you can browse with the knowledge that you’ve always got the latest attack protections the team at Google has released.

Basically, you should seek to reward the sites you enjoy because without the reward they’ll fade away.

Anyway, that’s enough rambling from me for today…

Man vs Wife: Uno

Gaming, Man vs Wife

Man vs WifeUno was developed in 1971 in Reading, Ohio by Merle Robbins to settle an argument with his son about the rules of Crazy Eights. They made the original decks on their dinning room table before selling the game to International Games in 1981. Since 1992 it has been produced by Mattel.

The game consists of a deck of 108 cards. 0 through 9 and six special cards appear in each of 4 colors. The special cards in each color are two Draw Twos, two Reverses and two Skips. There are also 4 Wild cards and 4 Wild Draw Four cards. Play is pretty simple. You shuffle, deal out hands of 7 cards to each player and then turn over the top card. On your turn you have to play a card if you have a card to play, and to play a card it must be either the same color or the same value as the top card of the discard pile, or a Wild. When you play a Wild, you get to pick one of the four colors – blue, green, red, yellow – to switch to for the next player. If a special card is played, the action happens to the next player – i.e. that player has to draw two cards from the draw pile, that player is skipped, or play changes directions and a different player goes next. If you don’t have a playable card, you draw one from the draw pile – if it’s playable, you play it; if not, your turn is over. And while you can play a Wild at any time, in order to play a Wild Draw Four – where you get to pick the color AND the next player has to draw four cards – it must be the only playable card in your hand.

UNO - The Box
One of the many different variations of "Original" UNO

(Wife: So, how do I win?) Don’t you mean, “How does a player win?” (Wife: Sure, if it helps you sleep at night.) A player wins by getting rid of all the cards in their hand. When you only have one card left, you have to say “Uno”. (Wife: Why?) Because it’s Spanish for One. (Wife: I know that. Duh. Why do you have to say it?) Because it’s a rule. (Wife: Why?) Because if you don’t and another player catches you, you have to draw two cards. (Wife: Got it.) Anyway, once you go out, you get points based on the cards the other players are still holding. 50 points for wilds, 20 points for special cards, and face value for number cards. The first player to 500 points (Wife: Me.) wins.

Being that there were only two of us, we played the Two Player variant. The only important difference is that a Reverse card acts like a Skip, so if you play one it’s your turn again. (Wife: So, if I play a Skip, you get skipped. And if I play a Reverse you get skipped?) Yes. And with two players, playing a Draw Two or Wild Draw Four essentially skips the other player, since they have to draw cards instead of playing a card.

We shuffle and deal and play. (Wife: This is a big deck.) Yeah, shuffling is a bit of a pain. Just over twice the size of a normal deck, I remember having to shuffle it in pieces as a kid. Now I can do it all together, but still occasionally lose control of it. Game play can actually get kind of mean-spirited, especially in two person play. (Wife: Making me draw cards repeatedly sucks.) What about making me draw cards repeatedly? Does that suck too? (Wife: No, that’s a lot of fun!) Hrmph. One thing you can do in two player that you can’t do with three or more people is stack up your cards. If you had a hand that was a green Skip, a red Skip, a red Reverse, a red Draw Two, a blue Draw Two, a blue Skip and a Wild, and the play to you is something green, you’ve won the game because if you lay down the cards in the right order you are always skipping the other player or making them draw and you can always play.

During our play, she won a hand where she only got 4 points (Wife: Lame!) because I only had three cards, two 2’s and a 0. But there was also a hand where she got 180 points (Wife: Woohoo!) when she ended with a Wild Draw Four (Wife: Suck it!) and in the four cards I picked up I got two wild cards to add to the one I already had. I took the lead pretty early (Wife: Boo!) and was up 431 to 216, but after that I only won one more hand for 9 points and she racked up five wins for 302 total points. (Wife: I win!) She wins, 518 to 440.

We were going to do two out of three again (Wife: Because you wanted to cheat me out of my win.) but it took well over an hour to play the first round. With all the drawing that happens, both because of cards played and because of not having a card to play, some hands can drag out. You can get down to “Uno” and then find yourself unable to play a card on your next five or six turns. (Wife: And you can come back from having a bunch of cards in your hand when someone else says “Uno” to winning.) Indeed. (Wife: Especially when someone keeps forgetting to say “Uno” and I make them draw two cards.) I thought we weren’t going to bring that up? (Wife: I agreed to nothing!) Well, yeah, sometimes I forgot to say it and I got caught. (Wife: Ha ha!) Shut it!

The basic strategy in the game is to get rid of all the cards that are worth big points, unless you seriously feel like you can chain cards together later to dump them. (Wife: You and your strategy.) The biggest point gains were usually done by making the other player draw cards with your last few plays. More than one hand ended with a Wild Draw Four. (Wife: Mostly mine.) Of course, with a game as simple as Uno, you can spice things up with all sorts of house rules. A typical one being that if you can’t play a card you have to draw cards until you get a playable one. And there are lots more.

Anyway…

Man, 0. Wife, 4.

(Wife: Uno! Times four, because I’ve won four times.)

Podcast Playlist

Reviews, Stuff on the Net
Podcast Logo
Feed me.

It’s been about 9 months since I wrote about radio shows. And things have changed a little since then, so I figured I’d do a round-up and review of the podcasts I’m currently listening to. Here they are, in alphabetical order:

  • Atlanta Radio Theater Company – They do all sorts of stuff, from sci-fi to horror to comedy to … well, pretty much anything. If you pull up their feed, you can listen back to several years worth of recordings, which I have. The current format for the free podcast is monthly, so once you catch up it’s easy to stay current. And if you don’t mind paying for things, you can get a bunch of their full shows at audible. Overall it’s good, though sometimes I feel the live audience detracts from my enjoyment. But for free, I can’t complain.
  • Common Sense – Dan Carlin talks about politics and current events. It’s interesting to see the way he ties topics together, all without sounding like some sort of conspiracy loon. It helps, I suppose, that I tend to agree with his views. A little confirmation bias, but at least I’m aware of it.
  • Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History – Long, sometimes multipart, podcasts about historical topics. Some are better than others, but all of them are interesting in their own way. I wish my history teachers in school had spoken with this much passion for the subject.
  • Decoder Ring Theater – Back in my original post when I was looking for old-time radio style shows, this is what I was looking for. They have two main shows, The Red Panda Adventures and Black Jack Justice, which are a Shadow-style superhero and a pulp noir detective, respectively. They also do other items in their Showcase, and like ARTC they’ve got years of shows in their feed, and I’m still catching up – I’m in June of 2007 with over 100 episodes to go, and loving every one so far.
  • How Did This Get Made? – Listen as a few comedians talk about movies that are so bad that they are awesome, and occasionally movies that are awesome but in ways that defy the Hollywood system yet still got made. I highly recommend the episode on Punisher War Zone as an example of the latter, and they even got the director on as a guest.
  • Making It – Riki Lindhome (of Garfunkel and Oates) talks to people involved with acting and movies about how they got started, the breaks they’ve had, the troubles they’ve run into and more. I’d recommend it to anyone interested in acting as a profession.
  • Penn’s Sunday School – I just started this one, so I don’t have a real opinion on it yet, but since I pretty much love everything that Penn Jillette does I’m sure this won’t be the exception.
  • Radio Free Burrito – Wil Wheaton keeps to no particular schedule and just random puts out collections of stories and bits of music. It isn’t deep, but I enjoy it.
  • The Moth – Podcast version of their True Stories Told Live, it ranges from serious and thought-provoking to silly and thought-provoking. And they are short, so I can listen to one when I run quick errands in the car.
  • The Nerdist – Chris Hardwick, Jonah Ray and Matt Mira talk to people, usually about comedy but really about anything that comes to mind. Personally, I delete all the episodes without a guest because I just don’t find their “hostfull” episodes to be worth the hour.
  • This American Life – A podcast version of the radio show, they pick a topic, interview people and tell stories. It’s more like a news program than anything else I listen to, very highly produced rather than just talking. I think I mostly listen to this because “everybody” listens to it. Half the time I’m barely paying attention. Maybe I should drop it.
  • Thrilling Adventure Hour – Much like the Decoder Ring Theater, this is new stories in the style of old-time radio, though here they do much more comedy. In fact, I don’t think I’ve heard anything that wasn’t comedic. Beyond Belief and Tales from the Black Lagoon are my favorites.
  • We’re Alive – A serial drama set in the zombie apocalypse. This show is right up my ally, and I cannot begin to convey the amount of pure awesome that this show is. Everyone should listen to it. If you are just starting, there are two complete seasons with the third under way.

I’m always open to more, so if you have good ones to suggest, please do so. I might just add it to my trusty Zune.

Draw Something

Gaming, Pictures

So, the game Draw Something from OMGPOP has made a splash. Not only for being a game people seem to enjoy playing, but for being the reason that Zynga bought OMGPOP for $180 million.

If you haven’t played it, the game goes like this: You challenge another player and are given three words worth 1, 2 and 3 coins with the idea that these words are easy, medium and hard respectively. You select a word and then try to draw it. Your turn ends when you submit your drawing. Your opponent then begins by getting to see your drawing as you drew it – this is key because you can make crude animation this way, but they also get to see your mistakes – and at the bottom they have a number of spaces (if you drew a five letter word, there will be five spaces) and a rack of 12 random letters. They have to guess the word you tried to draw. Then they get a turn to draw a word, and the whole thing goes back and forth like that forever.

The coins you earn can be used to buy more colors, because you start with a limited number – you don’t realize how important a color is until you can’t use it. The free game comes with a selection of words and ads. The paid version loses the ads and gives you 2,000 more words.

Draw Something - TitanicI really enjoyed the game at first, running through enough games to buy three extra color packs, but as time went on, I had to fight with myself to keep playing. I’d look at the icon on my phone and the only reason I’d end up playing is because I’m holding up someone else. I suppose I would play more if I was awesome at drawing, or if the people I played with were. But none of my games have had masterpieces like the ones in this CNN story.

I suppose if I keep playing Draw Something I can switch to spending hours on a drawing instead of just under a minute – but then it just feels silly since people guess the word quickly, the animation skips to the end and then rolls the picture away. At the very least, this game needs a way to stop and admire a drawing, and a built-in method for taking screenshots or otherwise saving drawings would be awesome.

The ultimate failure of Draw Something is the limited vocabulary. Running a dozen or more games, I quickly exhausted the recognizable words and must resort to either going to look up words I don’t know or drawing the same things over and over again. But what makes the limited vocabulary even more of a flaw is that, by and large, people draw similar things to picture the same words. So when someone starts drawing the state of Florida, which has a distinctive shape, I can look at the length of the word and the letters available and guess “Miami” long before they even finish. If they start drawing the entire United States? Chances are the answer is “Timezone”. And so on, and so on. The more you play, the less the game becomes about guessing than it is recognizing and remembering. “Oh, that looks similar to the picture someone else drew for ‘Dresser’ and I’m looking for a seven letter word and have all those letters, so it’s ‘Dresser’.” Of course, you can stop that yourself by simply trying to think of the least common way to draw your word. Like if your word is “Paris” instead of drawing the Eiffel Tower or other well-known images, you could draw Lieutenant Tom Paris from Star Trek: Voyager.

Maybe new owners Zynga will fix that, though, knowing Zynga, I expect new word packs to cost money, and the game just isn’t fun enough for me to sink any more cash into. Not when there are games like Drawception out there that are much more freeform, and thus has unlimited possibilities. Speaking of… this is my profile over at Drawception, so you can check out my games and drawings.

More Than Fans

Dragon*Con
Dragon*Con 2012, Aug 31 - Sep 3
Dragon*Con 2012, 8/31 - 9/3

The thing that I love most about Dragon*Con is that it is a convention for fans by fans. It isn’t an industry event. While we are more than happy to have the industry support us, they don’t guide the programming or run the panels, and I know personally that we’ve left money on the table rather than allow someone else dictate have more control than we were willing to give.

And the fans make the con. Seeing people who love stuff loving that stuff is incredible. There is no better feeling that being at the front of a room, looking out at a sea of faces and knowing that they love what you are giving them because you love it too.

But more than just sitting in panels and listening to the guests and staff talk about stuff, Dragon*Con also hosts a number of workshops that an attendee can sign up for (at additional cost – we have to pay the instructors something for their time). I’ve personally done one of the 2 day writing workshops and it was well worth the price.

Some years I don’t pay much attention to the workshops when I know I won’t have time, but this year I just happened on the page and noticed they’ve got some really cool stuff.

  • Acting Workshop – Writer, director and actor Amber Benson is doing 2 days of classes about the business of active, improv, character building, and scene breakdown.
  • Artist Workshops – David A. Cherry is doing a series of 2 and 3 hour classes on acrylic painting, life drawing, photoshop for illustration & game art, and game asset creation in 3D Studio Max. He’s also doing a smaller personal project review of illustration & game art.
  • Astronomy Workshop – 2 days of astronomy fundamentals, stars, planets, common science fiction science issues, misconceptions, jargon and more, presented by a panel of astronomy and education professionals.
  • Benjamin Radford Scientific Investigation Workshop – 2.5 hours of Ben Radford explaining in detail how to investigate mysteries and miracles.
  • Belly Dancing with Phoenicia Workshop – 4 sessions to teach you to belly dance. (This one is free with your con admission.)
  • Tai Chi Workshop with Erin Gray – A 1 hour introduction to the theory and practice of Tai Chi and Chi Kung.
  • Virginia Hey Meditation Workshop – An hour of discussion followed by an hour of guided meditation.
  • Writer’s Hourly Workshop with Michael A. Stackpole and Aaron Allston – 15 one hour sessions covering many topics in the world of writing.
  • Writer’s Two Day Intensive Workshop with Jody Lynn Nye – 2 days with one teacher, covering many aspects of crafting stories, ending with a personal critic of material you submit prior to the workshop. (This is the one I did, but back when Ann C. Crispin was teaching it.)

It’s just cool to me that this kind of stuff goes on. And this doesn’t even scratch the surface of all the things a lot of panels cover. The costuming track alone does so many on crafting costumes…

I’ve never been to Comic Con, and one day I might just to see the spectacle, but it seems to me it’s the sort of con where you go to see your favorite stars and maybe get an autograph. Dragon*Con, to me, has always been a con where you go to hang out with other people who love the same stuff (or different stuff) that you love and maybe run into one of your favorite stars who have come to hang out too.

Best Friends Forever

Random Thoughts, Stuff on the Net

I love apocalyptic films. Especially zombie films, but even when they don’t have zombies. And Best Friends Forever doesn’t have zombies. Instead, BFF is about two girls on a road trip while the world ends. If it sounds interesting, you should consider backing their Kickstarter, which they are using to get the money to complete post-production and release the movie.

You should support it, if for no other reason than to ensure that I get my copy. Because it really is all about me.