Bezier Games' presents Ted's Blog

Pre-Essen gear up and slow down

2008-06-16T02:59:00.000-07:00

Summer is a very strange time for game publishers. By June, they're pretty much done figuring out what their Essen Spiel lineup will be, and they are either (1) hammering out the production details and setting up print runs or (2) panicking because they haven't started on those same production details or print runs. For the last few years, due to limited game components and materials, I've waited way too long to even determine what will be Essen releases, let alone all the nasty details. Of course, two years ago I was only in another publishers' booth for a few hours, and last year I shared a booth with Warfrog. There's less pressure, it seems, when you've got a booth buddy.

A few months ago I posted to a list or two about maybe having a booth buddy, but nothing really worked out, and so I have my own booth at Essen. It's a really great number: 5-100. That's right, 100. Cool. And while it's along the wall, it's at the end of an open aisle, and since I was in the same area last year, I know that it's a very heavily-trafficked area. And it's Hall 5, which kind of rocks. Hall 5 and Hall 9 are the two Euro publisher halls, and tend to have, for lack of a better term, my "people" in them. People who are predisposed to the games I'll have in my booth. I suppose halls 10, 11 and 12 would be fine too, but it would be easy to be overshadowed by Rio Grande, Days of Wonder, Hans Im Gluck, Kosmos, and all the other BIG publishers who make their homes there. It's definitely more German-centric in those three halls too, and a little more family-game oriented. In Hall 5 last year there was JKLM, Warfrog, Valley Games, and a whole bunch of smaller publishers. Note that those three publishers are from English-speaking countries: UK, UK and Canada.

This year, knowing I would have my own booth, I've spent the last few months of weeknights and weekends gearing up for my Spiel '08 offerings. In fact, all of my non-working, non-gaming, non-doing-stuff-with-kids time has been Essen preparation. Getting a handle on it early seemed necessary. Not just for the booth, but because this year is going to be the biggest yet for Bezier Games in terms of how much stuff I'm going to have that's brand new, and how much stuff I'm going to have overall.

Starting with the booth, I've gotten a few banners posted, but still have several signs to make. But the banners are out of the way...including a brand new Bezier Games banner for the top of the booth that's pretty sweet, and two game banners: one for Rapscallion and one for another new game that will be announced later this summer. I've got to figure out the furniture thing for the booth too, which is kind of annoying due to the show being in Germany. Most folks in the know buy stuff at IKEA (there's one in Essen, I've actually been there on a Quest for Breakfast a few years ago) and then store it someplace (I can do that, since LudoPackt offers that service). My best friend and his girlfriend have graciously offered to help in the booth this year, so I have all the help I need (including a booth babe, that's never a bad thing).

For the games, I've got AoS expansions as well as another new game (and Rapscallion, while it won't be brand new, will be on display for the first time at Essen Spiel). The AoS expansions are all done, rules, board design, translation, and the production is underway on all of them. I'm way ahead of the curve here. For the other new game, it just was sent out to production a week ago, and that's a little more iffy, but I'm still feeling pretty good about it.

So at this point I only have to announce the games, take preorders, follow up with all the different production houses on the progress of the games, and tend to all the other little details critical for the show. But I have FOUR months to do it all. And since I've been to Essen three times already, there's really very little I don't know, which helps a lot in the planning process. I'm actually feeling pretty optimistic about it!

And that's not saying anything about the new games and expansions, which absolutely rock. Really. Good stuff!

Gathering of Friends 2008 recap

2008-04-15T04:38:00.000-07:00

Well, it's over. After a grueling (really, kind of sort of) 10 days of gaming in Columbus, I'm back in the real world. But I did manage to play a whole boatload of games, many new, during that time. So here's a quick recap. Before I get into the details, some quick stats:

117 games played in total
50 distinct games played (including prototypes)
18 published games played for the first time, with 6 of them brand new
16 plays of prototypes, 13 of them from other designers
3 plays of Age of Steam, one each of my new map designs (out of a total of 4)
27 games of Tichu played
9 games of Ultimate Werewolf played/moderated

Of the 5 new (just published, or soon-to-be) games I played, I was particularly taken with Hanging Gardens, the new Hans Im Gluck game that plays in 20-30 minutes (even faster if you have nice fast players). It's a light game that includes placing cards tetris-like in order to create orthogonal groupings of "motives" which can then be scored to obtain tiles. Various tile sets are worth various amounts of points. It's fast and engaging and feels like a full game even with the short play time.

I also very much enjoyed Say Anything from Northstar, a combination of Apples to Apples and Wits and Wagers. The good parts of both are used to form a fun, sometimes silly, gamers' party game (I personally despise Apples to Apples, so the fact that I like this is significant). It's simple enough: One player reads their choice of category from a card that starts "In my opinion..." The categories are varied, such as "...this person is an idiot" or "...the best TV channel is." Each of the other players writes down an answer and tosses it in the center of the table. If an answer that duplicates one already submitted is added, the reader can reject it as being too similar, and that player writes a new answer. Once all players have submitted answers, the reader secretly chooses the answer they feel is the closest to "their opinion," and the players bet on the submitted answers with up to two chips. The reader reveals the answer they chose, and the players who also chose this answer receive one point for each chip on that answer. The person who originally wrote the answer also receives one point, and the reader receives one point per chip on the right answer (up to 3 points max). The reader rotates position until everyone has read, and once everyone has read once, the game is over. I expect this to be a big hit, probably bigger than Wits and Wagers.

Faster and more thinky is Big Points where players place tokens on colored discs, snapping up a disc at either end of any group of tokens. The token's color value is determined by the order in which the tokens reach the final "scoring stairs." There are also black tokens for extra turns (and the ability to move a token backwards) as well as white tokens that act as multipliers for each differently colored token you have at the end of the game. Fast, light, in many ways a faster version of That's Life/Verflexxt, but also having some characteristics of the excellent Bunte Runde.

A lot of people have already said this, and I would have to agree with them: Witches' Brew, the new Alea mid-size (Louis XIV) card game is light and harmless, and requires some outthinky techniques (you don't want to match the cards other players have chosen), but in the end it feels somewhat random and a little disappointing. I had heard enough about this prior to playing to expect it to be this way, and my initial play of it confirmed my suspicions: this is not a game I'll be playing again.

Ticket to Ride: The Card Game, which I've been mocking in Board 2 Pieces (and rightfully so, since TTR is really more about the cards than the board), is actually a very enjoyable game. It's just different enough from TTR to be worth playing. It has an annoying memory aspect (I assume it was done to keep the game moving along, which it does at a nice fast clip), but otherwise it's very enjoyable. Players are collecting sets of cards to fulfill the requirements of their ticket cards just like in the board games, but how this is done is the interesting part. Each player on their turn picks up 1 card from each stack in front of them and then can either pick up 2 cards or a set of ticket cards, or they can play cards in front of them. And Boom! their turn is over, and play goes to the next player. Cards played in front of them must be either three different cards or as many cards of one color (and wilds) as they wish. However, if another player has cards of that color showing, the cards played must outnumber the opponent's set. If they do outnumber the opponent's set, the opponents' cards are removed. It's a nice bit of interaction mixed in with the general cardplay. I liked this a lot, and will probably pick up a copy...I could see this getting more play than TTR boardgames.

The Lost Cities board game, Keltis, brought the basic tough decisions of Lost Cities (should I discard or play?) to a board game that's just different enough to be compelling. Just as in the card game, you've got to balance how much you want to invest in each of the five sets correctly, knowing that you'll need to advance in 2-4 of them (never all five) to be successful. Again, something I liked quite a bit and will be picking up. The rumor is that Rio Grande will be publishing this as Lost Cities: The Board Game instead of the Irish-themed German version...that is a great idea.

Games I didn't play that were on tables throughout the Gathering included Stone Age, which I decided I wouldn't like after hearing mostly average to below average things about it, and watching a few turns of other games. It looks nice, but I couldn't see playing it more than once. Ever. I also avoided Aquaretto, since I despise Zooloretto, but it does have a cool dolphin on the front cover of the box. I didn't see Metropolys being played, or I would have jumped at the chance to play...it's a little ugly artwise, but I think it's my kind of game.

To the left are Rick, Frank, Nikki, Michael, Rodney and Dan playing my new prototype "My List is Longer." I did play a whole bunch of prototypes from other designers, including a new Power Grid expansion prototype from Friedemann that I really liked (and I don't really like PG that much anymore...but this is an expansion I would definitely get). It had really tight economics, making decisions to purchase resources much tougher than in a typical game. I also played a few other 2F prototypes with Friedemann that I really enjoyed, including the one that's slated for a fall release. I played the civ dice game prototype and that was okay, but felt very solitairish. Thomas Lehman's 2 player card game prototype needs to be published...it's a game I've been thinking about long after playing, and am looking forward to trying it again. And of course I played the Rio Grande game X prototype that Valerie and Dale were working on, which I found compelling...it still needs some work, but even the way it is today I could see myself playing it quite a bit. Many other prototypes were played, but the ones listed above were the standouts.

I also found time to play and teach some of the new AoS expansions I'm working on, including X, XX, and XXX. They're all in the final tweaking stages, and I received some great feedback from the many plays of the different maps. The XXX map seemed to be the big favorite there.

Older games that were played by me for the first time included Show Manager (fun, and surprisingly good with 6 players). I played a few games of Schnapp from Haba, and even though I was told there was "no blocking in Schnapp," I'm going to pick up a copy and work on my Schnapping technique. I played a few enjoyable games of Chicken Squabble from Haba, where you flick poop-looking chicken feed and try to scoop it up before the fox comes out and chases you back to the henhouse. I also finally got to play the published version of Pandemic. A nice surprise was a quick game of Portrayal, a drawing party game that I really need to pick up.

Lots and lots of Tichu was played, including advancing to the 3rd round of the tournament with Matthew Monin, my partner from last year in which we won. This year we were knocked out by William Attia's team, which went on to win the championship. Throughout the week, I played 27 games in total, many with Mary Prasad as my partner. Monday morning started off with glee for Tichu players as Jay had brought in a few cases of the new Tichu decks, one red and one gold, and made them available to attendees. These are complete decks, and they have an extra layer of coating so that they last longer. I snatched up 6 decks, four of which went to gamers at my game group on Monday (and at least four other folks wanted them). Jay says they will be in stores/online sometime in May.

What would a Gathering be without lots of Ultimate Werewolf? That is, if you play werewolf. Which I do. I only played nine games this year, moderating 3 or 4 and playing the rest. The good news is my team won most of the time. The bad news is that I kept getting lynched by the village, whether I was a werewolf or not. We played with a variety of different roles, and had some very memorable games with the Cursed (a villager who turns into a werewolf if attacked by them), the Village Idiot (he always votes for nominated players to die) and the Spellcaster (who mutes one player each day).

The entire stretch of 10 days is now somewhat of a blur, including the gameshow (great job by Andrea, Friedemann, Dale and Valerie), Sunday's dinner with more than 100 folks there, the prize table ceremony (I picked up Starcraft), one too many trips to White Castle, Waffle House and Dunkin' Donuts and not enough trips to Red Robin, holding my breath in the Ramada "smellevator," listening to an engaging talk from Mike Gray of Hasbro, and sleeping an average of 4.5 hours a night (actually it was morning usually).

Just 350 days until next year's event!

Ubongo Extreme Craxy Expansion - creation notes

2008-03-03T05:46:00.000-08:00

Today I published a new expansion for Ubongo Extrem: "Ubongo Extrem Craxy Expansion," which has 70 new puzzle cards with four 5-piece solutions on each of them. It's a more than a little crazy, thus the "x" (for xtra crazy).

Ubongo Extrem was one of my favorite Essen 2007 releases, taking the original up a notch in difficulty, and making the scoring system much better to use. You can read my review of it here: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/296660

Originally, I had just wanted to see if 5-piece puzzles made sense to create and solve. I printed out a bunch of hexes and went to it, and found out that it made the game much more challenging. And it was also kind of fun to design each board. In fact, it was so much fun that my kids joined in and helped out by designing 20 of the 70 boards that come with the expansion.

Once I realized that I was going to make enough puzzles for an expansion, I printed up a "test" board (shown above). I started by placing five tiles (always using one 9 or higher piece), then marking off the unused spaces. I circled the pieces I was using on the board. Then I took a picture of it (so that I could recover the solution in case of getting stuck), and picked a different color and tried to find 5 pieces that worked in the same shape. I circled those pieces and took another picture, and repeated twice more for the other two colors. I did this for all 50 boards that I designed, and the kids did it for each of the 20 boards they designed.

With all these puzzles defined, I hopped into Illustrator CS3 and created each of the puzzles, two to a page. I used symbols for the pieces, and I started with the "planner" shape above, deleting the hexes that were marked off for each puzzle. It was fairly time consuming for each puzzle, but still somewhat enjoyable to make them. I would estimate the time at about 1/2 hour per puzzle in total. So that's about 35 hours of puzzle creation. Then there's the time for creating the sleeve, formatting the files so they could fit into a reasonable-sized PDF for downloading, and all the prep work of drawing the pieces and setting them up.

Finally, it was time to test the expansion puzzles, and to determine what modifications to the rules (if any) were required. Initially I really wanted to just crank up the difficulty with the extra piece, but I found that people were able to finish them in most cases by the time that two timers were completed, so I modified the rules a bit to allow for that.

Then I finalized the sleeve/instructions, touched up the PDF, took some pictures of the game, and sent out the announcement to BGN and posted the game page and PDF on the bezier games website (http://games.bezier.com.craxy.html). And finally I wrote this, for a total of about 60 engaging hours spread over 2.5 weeks of time.

Now there's the wait for the expansion to appear in BGG (not sure what the process is there, but it seems very random for how long it takes to get a game to appear)...

Gathering Prep 2008

2008-02-25T05:54:00.000-08:00

It's only one short month until this year's Gathering of Friends, the annual invitation-only boardgaming event that I will be attending for the second time this year. I was SO excited to attend last year that I wrote a whole bunch of articles for boardgamenews.com prior to going (here, here and here), and wrote a follow up article afterwards as well. Almost a year later, I have a different, somewhat subdued take on the event.

Let's be very clear that by subdued, I mean I'm not as crazy about going as I was last year. But I am still really excited, and am looking forward to this more than any other gaming event (as much as I love Essen each fall, it's clear to me that it will be a significant amount of work prior to and at the show for the foreseeable future for me). At The Gathering, I get to play games for 10 days straight.

Last year, I played more than 100 games over the 9 days I attended. While I had brought some of my prototypes with me, last year was much more about relaxing and meeting new people than it was about business. This year that will shift slightly, but not too much, as I have a couple of games that are all contenders for this fall's Essen.

REMOVED due to me being very very secretive.

Both of these games are in the final stages of playtesting, but due to being a small publisher, only one of them will make it to print for Essen this year. I'm trusting the good folks at The Gathering to provide the feedback I need to make the right choice.

And I'll be bringing a bunch of new AoS maps with me, one set which might make it for Essen as well. However, that might hinge on the new printing and/or edition of Age of Steam being available. If there is a new AoS, I'll definitely publish one of the new sets. If not, it's possible but not certain.

Outside of that, the only other prep I have to do for the Gathering has been a lot of fun: I'm just finishing up a Smarty Party (tm) "Gamers' Expansion" of which I will print only two copies: 1 for play at the Gathering, and another for the Prize Table. So far I have 48 Cards, which is about 25% of a standard Smarty Party deck, enough for about 4-5 games. It's a lot of fun for gamers, and a lot of gamers really like Smarty Party, so it should be a good fit. After the Gathering, I will post a PDF of the cards on the Bezier Games site and on BGG (probably on the Smarty Party page, although maybe since it's an expansion, it should have its own page...).

At The Gathering last year, I played a whole lot of games, but I played more Ultimate Werewolf than anything else. By Far. Here's the list of games I played:

Ultimate Werewolf	21
Unpublished Prototype*	11
Tichu	9
Catch Phrase	5
Loopin' Louie	5
Notre Dame	5
Can't Stop*	4
Smarty Party!	4
Age of Steam - Third Edition	3
Crokinole	3
Liar's Dice	3
Age of Steam	2
Medici vs Strozzi	2
Time's Up!	2
Wits & Wagers	2
Wizard	2
Abstracts*	1
Animalia*	1
Blue Moon City	1
Caylus	1
Caylus Magna Carta*	1
Deduce or Die*	1
Factory Fun	1
Farlander*	1
Inspiration*	1
Pillars of the Earth, The	1
Poker	1
Qwirkle	1
Ra	1
Rum & Pirates*	1
Santorini	1
Starship Catan*	1
Thingamajig*	1
Ys	1
Zooloretto*	1
Smarty Party! - Junior Expansion Set*	1

Games with * were first time plays, including probably 7 or 8 of the prototypes. So of the 102 games I played, only 19 were new.

I'm hoping to play as many games this year, but expect to play less new ones (my playing history on BGG shows that as the years progress, the number of games new to me decreases, and will continue to for some time until I run out of old games that interest me which I haven't played).

I'd like to play more Tichu and less UW, but I know how hard it is to resist the call of the moderator. Or to resist being called to moderate. I'd like to play more AoS (not my maps, but other ones). And I want to play more fun party games (but not too much Catch Phrase, which is okay but not great). And I want to make sure I try more prototypes. I know I got in 8 or so (that weren't mine), but there were a lot of games that where there last year that I missed: Cuba (I wouldn't have bought it at Essen had I played it first), Race for the Galaxy (I *would* have bought it at Essen if I had played it), FF's Felix (bought this anyway, glad I did). I'm really glad I played Zooloretto (not a prototype, it was just released), as I HATED it and didn't buy it and am irritated that it won the SdJ (Yspahan should have won, or even Pillars).

I'm also hoping to go out to eat more. Last year I was so caught up about losing game time that I NEVER went out to eat. I just ordered in and occasionally went out and grabbed a sandwich or burger or something, and pretty much ate only 1 or 2 meals a day, with lots of snacking. That said, I will have a car and my GPS, so I'll be able to take folks out to pretty much anywhere easily.

It was interesting to read a recent thread on the Geek about how you get invited to The Gathering, and shortly thereafter a note from Alan mentioned the most obvious way: meet Alan and chat him up, and unless you're a cave troll, you very well could get an invite. It's a lot less exclusive than it seems, and probably the only reason it's invitation only is so that there aren't any folks there who disrupt the flow of the event; in the 9 days I was there last year I didn't meet a single person who I didn't think should have been there. Everyone was there to play and have fun and it showed.

Well, it's 5+ weeks and counting, and I'm excited about going. Maybe moreso than I first stated at the beginning of this entry. But still not as bad as last year... :)

Not caring too much about the writer's strike

2008-02-10T16:39:00.000-08:00

Well, okay, I do care. I care that Lost won't have enough episodes and that there's no more Heroes and that Dirty Sexy Money is out of new episodes. And maybe a few other series.

But thanks to Celebrity Apprentice, Paradise Hotel 2, Survivor F vs. F and Big Brother 9, it's not that important. And I guess I'll admit to watching AI when it gets to the 12 finalists (though I spend about 20 minutes watching, zipping past pretty much everything else).

Celebrity Apprentice has been the best Apprentice since season 1, with Gene Simmons and Piers and Omarosa and the crazy Baldwin. And of course Ivanka, who is the toughest girl on TV, ever. I'm a little bit tired of the whole "do it for charity" thing, 'cause it's boring week after week, and this past week's living window challenge was lame. But it's not about the challenges on CA, it's about the celebrities and how they interact with each other. Good stuff.

Paradise Hotel 2 is still an unknown, but Paradise Hotel in 2003 was the best trashy reality TV ever, and for whatever reason I really liked host Amanda's "you'll have to leave Paradise...forever" line. The contestants this time seem like they have a lot of potential, though I did miss the attitude of season one's Charla.

Survivor Micronesia with the Fans and the Favorites could be really good, and maybe with Johnny Fairplay gone right away it will be even better. The Parvati/James/Amanda/Ozzy foursome should theoretically be guaranteed a winner, but of course things like that rarely happen. China was a nice upswing for the series, hopefully this will go even further...

Big Brother 9, with the new "death do us part" slogan could be really good, sort of has an X-factor vibe to it. Though coming off the great dick/danielle season 8, it has a lot to live up to.

And hopefully we'll get more good stuff because those writers have had a 3 month vacation, and all of them are brimming with good ideas...

.

Blogs now on bezier.com

2008-02-07T05:44:00.000-08:00

I finally figured out how to put these blogs on my website (kind of a runaround pain, but doable). During that time, I was playing around with the posted blogs to make them look better on my site, and the date for each of them changed to yesterday, February 6th, even though most of them were written before that. Not sure if that's something I can change, or if it will always have that date there...oh well. The good news is that anything written here on blogspot goes to the website, which was the goal.

Still a lot of updates are needed for the site, which I'm hoping to get to this weekend.

In Bezier Games news/updates, Rapscallion is at the printer and now we're looking at late March. I'll be sending out a special email to existing Bezier Games customers for them to receive the product at less than retail. These preorders really help with the initial outlay required for publishing games for a small publisher. The costs for producing a game are insane, but I think I'm going to be able to deliver Rapscallion at a reasonable price with great quality.

.

CNN wins Super Tuesday

2008-02-06T06:31:00.000-08:00

I was pretty much glued to my TV from 5:30pm (PST) until around 10:00pm when it was pretty obvious that the Democratic delegates were split and that McCain had won California. Obama's ability to keep pace with Hillary and Huckabee's capture of multiple states were certainly the political highlights of the evening, but the real winner was CNN.

To be fair, I have to say that I've watched less and less CNN over the past several years, and a few years ago when Crossfire and The Capital Gang were taken off the air, I pretty much only tuned in in hotels that didn't have Fox News (not too many of those, thankfully). The political leanings aside, Fox has always had the shinier, better presentation, with more engaging personalities and guests, while CNN was SO boring. And dull. Aside from getting an occasional reality check due to the political leaning of Fox, CNN had little or no value anymore.

But then, this fall, CNN HD was added to my DirecTV lineup. I didn't really care that much, but boy those presidential debates looked awesome compared to the grainy Fox and MSNBC debate coverage. That visual impact (if you've got a 1080p HDTV) is pretty substantial. Nonetheless, the content didn't seem much better, but the presentation sure did.

When it came time to decide what to DVR on Tuesday, I chose CNN HD and ABC (sorry, Katie, it's just not working out between you and me). NBC wasn't an option (the "biggest loser" was on instead) unless I went with MSNBC, which leans SO far to the left it makes CNN seem conservative, even with Tim Russert on board to keep things a little more moderate. I did flip around a little to Fox and the recording on ABC, but I was absolutely GLUED to CNN HD coverage. They've outfoxed Fox when it comes to quality in presentation.

Wolf Blitzer, whose distaste for President Bush tends to ooze out like a thick, creamy liberal syrup, was very neutral as he stood in front of a giant 25 foot wide screen that showed the candidates and contested states. And it just wasn't a big screen, there were a lot of pixels flying around with a great deal of detail. Excellent screen quality, just the right amount of information, and a snazzy sharp design. Kudos to the graphics architect for CNN's political coverage.

Next to the big screen was a smaller array of four screens mounted at various heights and depths (from the camera). Soledad O'Brien (CNN's very capable hottie anchor/reporter) and William Schneider (who now that I watched him again, I do really miss) talked about exit polls in these screens, and they covered a different topic on each screen and then started over again. Good stuff, and a nice break from Wolf's big gigantovision screen.

But the best was to their right: John King and the Amazing Interactive Detail Board. This huge (80"?) TV had a fully interactive touch screen that John was obviously still learning to use. It enabled him to zoom in and out from the whole country down to county-level, and for each area the relevant stats were shown on the right (he could switch between GOP and Dems with just a touch on bars at the upper left). It was fun and informative and great eye candy.

The two desks for contributors were a little awkward, with two tiers with rotating guests, but the handheld camera movement gave the set a feeling of a whole lot going on, and there never seemed like there would be enough time to see or hear everyone.

On the downside, Larry King looked fuzzy (SD, not 'cause he hadn't shaved), and it was an odd transititon from Wolf to him (I thought at first Larry was going to be a guest, and then suddenly he's talking to the contributing talking heads).

Regardless, the CNN coverage rocked. Now if they can make their primetime programming more interesting, I'd love to have a real choice....

FOX News HD better hurry up or they're going to be left in the dust.

.

The Wire: Not the best show on TV

2008-01-21T06:09:00.000-08:00

It's only episode 3 of the fifth season of The Wire, but it's clear that this season is going to be one of the best. The storylines are complex yet digestible, and there's already a sense of not being able to wait for the next couple of episodes to see what's going to happen.

As for those claims of The Wire being the best show on TV, it's not. It's not a better show than Buffy, than the short-lived Firefly, than Lost at its best or The Sopranos. That's because The Wire isn't a TV show. It's really a 60-hour motion picture that's taken five years to make and view. The serialized drama nature is so pronounced that individual "episodes" really aren't stories in and of themselves, they are just chapters in the longest, most thickly intertwined character-driven novel that just happens to be on television.

I think it's interesting that there are two classes of people: Those who love The Wire and fully agree that it is probably the best thing ever filmed (or at the very least, one of the best), and those people who haven't seen more than two episodes of the show. Watching a single (or even two or three) episodes of the Wire is a fairly poor viewing experience, because of the lack of context. This is probably one of the reasons the show hasn't received the awards it deserves; it requires solid commitment from the beginning of the series to fully appreciate it.

In tonight's episode, Valchek, who was introduced in season two, makes what seems like a cameo. But in the short minute he's on screen, with the few lines he delivers, and the responses from the characters while he's in the room and immediately after he leaves, is worth hours of discussion. You feel you know these characters, so even when you see them or just hear their name mentioned (another police officer, "Bunny" was mentioned in what seemed like a throwaway line that had a similar effect). Each scene of the series causes you to reflect on other scenes, situations, and even "I wonder what character X is doing right now" because of the incredibly rich characterizations.

Because of this richness, I've adopted an unusual viewing pattern for this season. Before each new episode, I watch the previous week's episode. I do this for three reasons:

To catch a lot of the details I missed in the first viewing.
To make sure I'm ready for the new episode, with last week's activities fresh in my mind.
Because it's so good I can watch it again a week later, and look forward to doing so.

If you haven't seen The Wire, don't start watching it on HBO now. Buy or Rent the DVDs of the first season and watch that first, then the 2nd, then the 3rd and 4th. In some ways, I'm jealous of folks who haven't seen The Wire yet, because they'll get to view it all for the first time in a nice big solid chunk. Those of us who have been there since the beginning have patiently waited week after week for each show, with no possibility of the instant gratification that DVD watching provides.

.

Getting better...

2008-01-20T18:26:00.000-08:00

Well, it appears that Saturday was the peak of the nasty cold, and today I'm doing much much better. I attended Gamesday most of the day yesterday, even though I probably should have stayed home, but it was kind of nice to play games instead of just veg out while sniffling (and no one complained, and tried my best to keep the germs to myself). I played Race for the Galaxy for the first time, and it was indeed very compelling. I'll have to play it a few more times to be certain, but it was quite enjoyable. Maybe I'll pick up a copy from Game Kastle, I haven't patronized the new store location yet....
I've discovered a whole bunch of dead links on my site; I'll be spending a few evenings gettings those cleared up. And another evening figuring out how to get these blogs to appear on my site...hopefully it's just some Javascript I can pop in. And another evening fixing the "white background" graphics for a lot of the games.
I received my translation for Rapscallion from Henning, and in addition to the translation, he discovered a few other little boo-boos in the rules. That's good, 'cause the rules are now just blurring together and it's hard for me to see anything at all at this point. Today I set up all the pieces for the printer (still waiting on a few specs from the printer), and things look ready to go.

.

External blogging attempt...the site is live!

2008-01-18T21:03:00.000-08:00

Well, in order to get the site live, I've decided to go with an external blogging tool for now. Hooking it up into the site (besides just a simple link) is something I'll need to figure out, but for now it's good enough.

And more importantly, the site has now been updated and is live! Most everything is working, though there are some weird links and images that need to be updated. Most of that can be done in the future, however.

I'm still in heavy production mode...I've gotten most of the AoS expansions necessary for distribution done, so now I'm in UW creation, which is somewhat complicated due to the number of components. I did take the time out to shrinkwrap a box to see how it worked, and it turned out really nice. Still, it's a little time consuming and I need to figure out some techniques to make it look better and to avoid the "holes" that happen when the wrap gets too tight.

While in production, I've caught up on all episodes of Private Practice, which I had abandoned last year 'cause I was kind of bored. It's certainly watchable, but it's no Grey's. What is with the last five minutes of each show having some sappy folky song being over played? Sheesh. I'll keep recording it, but it's only in hopes that it's gets more interesting.

Really sick today, stayed home from work to try to get a little better.

.