A Shot of Orange Juice (the Blog)

Of course tying two of my hobbies together is something I like to do, and try to do it as much as I can. I read a fair amount, having a decent length commute on public transportation. And I choose to fill that time relaxing via really fat Fantasy books. I generally don’t give lengthy reviews about the books I read, but I do generally rate them on goodreads, and will generally consider recommendations for people who read similar books.

Anyway, where I was going with this is it seems that these authors of speculative fiction, understand the importance of table top games in their created cultures. And while none of these authors are game designers, they do give some high level description of how the games work. And sometimes even some specific game examples. While I’ve always noticed and appreciated the game references, early on with the many games Robert Jordan had in the Wheel of Time. I plan to have a recurring series of posts all based around this concept, specifically talking about the game, and some background info on the novel, potential game play choices. And maybe if I’m motivated, even a sample game design.

I think I had considered doing this when Dance with Dragons, book 5 of the (now) super popular A Song of Ice and Fire, was released and the game Cyvasse had some shining moments in relation to a specific plot element. Cyvasse reminded me of a game I played with my dad called Feudal, that was kinda like chess, but on a huge board, and had some other things mixed into it. I’ll probably even use Cyvasse as my first part of this series, but lost the motivation when I found out there already was a fan-made version of Cyvasse, but it took a ton of different turns than I think I would have.

But recently, I’ve had a few books have some interesting sounding games that resparked the interest. Currently, I’m reading Blood Song by Anthony Ryan (Never trust a man with two first names, unless he’s writing your epic fantasy) where I’m only about halfway into the first book and there was a reference to a game. But what really refired my interest was 9 Kings in Brent Weeks Lightbringer series. 9 kings has some strong comparisons with Magic, which apparently were an inspiration for his descriptions.

Anyway, my plan is to be as spoiler free as possible, but when major plot points surround the game, I’ll try to keep spoilers marked off as I can for those of you who dislike spoilers as much as I do. Really the goal here is to chat about the games, and how they might actually exist, using modern board games as a reference. Many of the games referenced in Fantasy books are abstract games that are Chess-like or Go-like. But there’s a fair amount of selection. In general, if I haven’t read all of the books that have been released in a series, I may not actual talk about a specific game, mostly to avoid spoilers myself.

I think the idea of Kickstarter is pretty solid. I’ve backed a few things that I definitely would have passed up if I saw them in the store, just so I could be a part of the process, and help see something happen that may not have otherwise. I want to talk briefly about two huge Kickstarters that seem to be suffering similar problems.

If you made it to my small little corner of the interwebs, I’m sure you are at least remotely familiar with the Ouya. These folks are trying to take back the TV with a console that has the specs of a phone (that’s a scary thought). But having a controller and hdmi out. $100 was the base price to actually get a controller, and they were so successful that they were able to fuel a huge upcoming launch. Now I haven’t received my Ouya yet, which is understandable since I had been debating back and forth whether I actually thought it was a good thing to back. So I backed it pretty late after I decided it would be nice to have a second console in my “Den” next to my Genesis. The 360 that I have from my Microsoft days lives proudly in the living room with it’s Massive faceplate.

There is a fair amount of frustration being posted by users on the Ouya kickstarter comments. I think some of the frustration is legitimate, the poor communication including a line graph that is very informative, and a reddit AMA that dodged all questions that would yield any useful information, and an upcoming retail launch that backers were promised to receive their Ouya’s before official launch. I know just recently they pushed the launch date back most of June, but here we were sitting in the first week of May, very very early backers hearing no word, and people started to get nervous. I would hope that a little bit of communication could have eased a lot of this, but a lot of marketing hoo-rah also caused these same issues. Now I’m not one of these folks that are disappointed in backing Ouya or needing to get a refund or anything like that. But a more precise method of how shipments were going out (priority queue) along with more raw numbers about how many have gone out, would be more than enough to make a lot of the dissenters feel more comfortable.

I also backed Reaper’s Bones kickstarter. Now I don’t consider Miniatures to be inside my realm of expertise for my gaming knowledge. Board games, video games, Magic: the Gathering (even though I no longer collect cards) all fit comfortably in. I’ve been playing RPGs since I was in 7th grade, even though I don’t have a regular game right now. But miniatures? No, they seem cool enough, but they are way expensive. But I couldn’t resist when I found out about the Bones kickstarter. Not only was there a huuuge amount of value (as opposed to Ouya, where you’ll pretty much be able to get the exact same stuff for the exact same price), but their goals were fantastic. Every odd numbered goal, something was added to the base Vampire package (also $100 for those counting at home). Every even numbed gave you extra add-ons to choose from. Some of the add-ons were ridiculous too. Take Kaladrax here. This was one of the last add-ons available for the Kickstarter. The price for me as a backer was $10. The retail price is $75. If I realized what a bargain all of the add-ons were, I could have easily spent another $100. So before even being tempted by add-ons I was receiving 241 models for $100. What a steal!

Now, onto the communication issues. I thought Reaper did a pretty good job explaining how things were going to work. They said that they were building all the molds, getting all the stuff produced overseas, and then had to package them up in their HQ in Texas before sending them out. They were planning on doing the simplest orders first (so they could get in a good groove of how shipping  works). They said their estimates would be when they would start shipping, and hit those dead on. They warned us about RepearCon (which was already in the works before the Kickstarter) which meant nothing would happen that week and in general made me feel pretty confident I was gonna get my stuff in a reasonable amount of time. I wasn’t expecting shipping miracles, but I was (and am since they haven’t come yet) pretty damned excited about having all of these bones, and painting a few of them for different things. But as soon as shipping started, all of the updates stopped. Early on I think one of the guys was in the comments trying to reexplain what they had mapped out, but no official updates came through. No Friday evening post saying “hey guys, things are going great, we’re still working our way through plain Vampire levels” or “I know you ordered a lot of stuff, but if you included the 4 pound Kaladrax, that pushes your order backwards in the priority queue”. Thankfully they did post very recently saying that they’ve made it through their whole first round of boxes, and are waiting the second round. I hope mine come soon, the stretch goals and the pure awesomeness of this has been an experience I hope can be replicated by other Kickstarters I back in the future.

For those of you who know me, you know I take public transit to work every day. Now I recently moved (maybe more on that later) but by moving I’ve changed my daily routine of walking 5 minutes to the train station to experimenting for Public Transit in my new place.

For those of you who don’t know me, I live in New Jersey (about 13 miles outside of Manhattan) and work in “the city”, technically Downtown Brooklyn, which many wouldn’t consider the city at all. Although the big boss keeps suggesting we might be moving into Manhattan at some point next year.

Anyway, so NJ Transit trains are fairly reliable, however I was one of the “lucky” who was stuck on the train under the tunnel for 3 hours. http://gothamist.com/2011/09/22/power_outage_leaves_four_trains_stu.php

Since I also have AT&T, I was able to keep myself entertained with my Nook and my Nintendo DS since I didn’t have the luxury of having the internet or phone service like the Verizon customers on my train… Anyway, in general the trains are very consistent, sometimes being clogged, but hardly taking more than 40 minutes (as opposed to the 30 they are estimated to take) to make a one way trip.

My new location is much further from the train I was taking (I could either walk about a mile to the closest stop, or my town also has a shuttle that I can take down to the train station I was previously taking, and do that. I haven’t quite done that in the mornings yet, as I’m barely awake enough to eat cereal and read some morning emails. But I have taken it home a few times (albeit to my old apartment, which still has a few things left behind). But it’s given me an interesting perspective on things.

1. Taking the DeCamp bus into the city isn’t really all that bad. I haven’t quite figured out the schedule yet, and there seems to be less consistency of when they actually arive. But my walk to the bus stop is much less than my old walk, since it picks up right at the end of my block.
2. Taking the DeCamp bus out of the city has the privilege of sitting on Route 3 the parking lot if any accidents or similar causation occur.
3. Although, I have been leaving work at a similar time and getting home at a similar time as long as the bus doesn’t have to stop because of traffic based on an accident.
4. I have the ability to take the bus up to my favorite bar http://www.cloverleaftavern.com which I guess I could have done before, but now it’s part of the flow of my evening commute instead of being a hassle and full planning ahead type of thing.
5. DeCamp “monthly” passes aren’t month long ones, like the NJTransit passes. When I buy 40 tickets at a discount, I’m literally getting 40 one way passes from it. When I buy a monthly NJ Transit ticket, I can ride NJ Transit all I want for that month, but that’s it. If I take a vacation for a week, then it’s not worth getting the pass for NJ Transit. For DeCamp, if I take a vacation for a week, then I just finish using up those tickets one week later then I normally would have.