Archives: Games

Playtesting B-17 Flying Fortress Leader

Until recently, Dan Verssen’s “Leader” game line has concentrated on various air war subjects. Given that my shelves are primarily filled with fantasy novels or books about pre 10^th century eras I didn’t find them initially intriguing no matter my growing interest in solitaire board games, but Marco Arnaudo’s enthusiastic review of Hornet Leader won me over.

Even after I snagged a copy I didn’t take to Hornet Leader immediately, though. There were so many different armaments and so many different planes that I remarked to my friend Dean Brown that I felt like I was playing “Armament Leader” because I had to spend so much time choosing which kinds of bombs to put on my aircraft. I gather that happens to some players. I decided it wasn’t really for me, but for people who really liked knowing minute details about planes and bombs, and traded it away, but then, talking with Dean, I got to wondering if I’d really given it a fair shot. I decided to trade for a new copy last winter. After I played again and took more time with it I was hooked, and enjoyed several campaigns from December to March. And that left me in good shape to understand what a Leader game was all about, probably a good thing for a playtester for the upcoming B-17 Flying Fortress Leader game…

Books and Games

Mornings around here have changed. I’ve continued to suffer from sleep issues, which means I drag, and so I’ve been adopting new patterns to try and help. For instance, rather than sitting down and slowly notwriting while I eat breakfast and surf for way more news than even interests me, as soon as my wife leaves I go clean the horse stalls in the morning, then eat breakfast. It gets the blood moving and wakes me up, but it means I’m not plunked in front of the laptop until 10:15 or 10:30, by which time I don’t feel like I’ve got enough time for any kind of lengthy blog post.

I’m allegedly reading War and Peace in the evenings, but I’ve only managed 40 pages. What with the sleep issues, I’m pretty zonked by 8:00 in the evening or so, and a story from The Savage Sword of Conan omnibus collection I own feels much more like my speed.

B-17 Leader

From time to time I talk about solitaire gaming here on the blog, as any frequent visitors know, and recently I mentioned I’ve been testing a game.

Yesterday evening that game went live on Kickstarter, and I sat down with both that game’s designer and the company’s owner, the award winning game designer Dan Verssen, to chat about both B-17 Leader and gaming in general. You can find my interview with Dean Brown over at Black Gate, and you can find the newly launched B-17 Kickstarter here.

48

Owning to his presence at an out-of-town summer camp the last few years during the week of my birthday, my son hasn’t been around to celebrate with me on that one day for a long while. He was here this time, though, and, marred only by the absence of my daughter at a summer camp of her own, this 48th birthday has been my favorite in recent memory.

I woke up after having dreamed I was a Beatle hanging out with Paul and John and some other Beatle named Phil at some time in ’65, judging by our hair, answering press questions and being fab together. That was pretty gear.

I wrote until about noon, then did some calisthenics with the first born, had lunch with him, then played a couple of war board games of Lock ‘n Load Tactical: Heroes of Normandy. Following on that, we traded off playing piano and guitar and hashed out a couple of songs together.

By then it was supper time, so we drove downtown and met my wife for a swank dinner (I had duck!). Upon our return home the first born dialed up a college friend via Skype then ran a science role-playing game for her, my wife, and me.

A grand time was had by all. I got to write, game, eat great food, play music, and hang out with (most) of my immediate family. It doesn’t get much better.

Elkins Again or At Last

As I was logging on to the interwebs this morning I received four notifications of new posts on the ‘ol web site. Traffic here hasn’t been as heavy lately — probably because I haven’t been on the site as often — so I was pleased. Except that all the posts were from trendily mis-spelled names, replies to old posts, and each was a single line of word salad encouragement rife with typos.

In short, it was spam, all from an IP in St. Petersburg. I still am awaiting some kind of explanation about how that nonsense helps anyone. Do these people get PAID to create spam? They must. And what does anyone get out of it? The mind boggles.

Right. So here’s what I MEANT to say today. Two interesting things are happening that have nothing to do with any of the problems and dilemmas we’re currently riding out in our republic.

House Rules

If you’re not a tabletop gamer or have no interest in tabletop gaming you should read no further unless you want to be bored or roll your eyes.

Long-time visitors are probably aware that I’ve been gaming off and on since junior high in the ’70s, when I was introduced to Dungeons & Dragons by my old friend Sean Connelly. Sometimes a couple of years will pass, but I always seem to come back to gaming, attracted by the allure of group storytelling and the camaraderie of sitting around with friends and family.

While I’ve been curious about the new edition of Dungeons & Dragons and even read through the new system books, I already had Castles & Crusades, and I remain attached to it, possibly because I’m sort of tired of learning new systems but also because it works quite well. Here’s an articulate essay on just what C&C is and how it works, if you’re curious. (I also like that you really don’t need anything more to run C&C than the Player’s Handbook and the Monsters & Treasure book. The C&C version of the DM’s guide, the Castlekeeper’s Guide, has alternate rules and add-ons, but isn’t at all necessary for running the game.)

Empires in America

I spent so much time drafting a review of a great solitaire war game at Black Gate this morning that I don’t have time to spare for much of a blog post on my own site. If you have any interest in solitaire gaming, particularly at the strategic level, you ought to pick up Empires in America from Victory Point Games. Details are here.

I know that I promised I’d be reading some modern stuff, much of it by people I know, but on the way out the door or over breakfast I keep grabbing something from my “I should have read this sooner” pile. So I’ve recently finished de Camp’s Dragon of the Ishtar Gate and I’m most of the way through the first of Poul Anderson’s three paperbacks about the exploits of that famous Viking, Harald Hardrada.

Nominations

I was delighted to learn that Bill Ward and I have been nominated for the Robert E. Howard Foundation’s Black River award for our Conan re-read series. That’s certainly not anything either of us was expecting, and it’s quite an honor. My friend Bob Byrne and Black Gate itself are among the other nominees, and I’m pleased for us all. It’s just good company to be in.

I’ve been very busy the last few days both with working on a synopsis of the 2nd and 3rd books of my new series, and, in the early morning, play testing my friend Dean’s new board game. It’s a blast, and I mean to talk about it when I’m just a little further along with it. You can click here for some preliminary details.

Friday I’ll have some details on some cool old stories I’ve been reading.

Conan RPG

I’m really torn. Have you seen this? It’s already blown through its initial funding AND a couple of stretch goals and it’s just launched.

The trailer looks great. The people involved are top-notch, and some of them are my friends. Given my love for the Hyborian Age, it seems like a no-brainer… but I have SO many game systems already, some of which emulate a sword-and-sorcery vibe quite well, AND while I would love to play in such a game, I’m not sure that any of the people I game with are even half in love with the setting and character as much as I am, particularly my wife. I love her madly, but she has little appreciation for Conan or REH. And that means this game would probably end up as a glorious shelf decoration.

My other worry is that If I do sign on just so I can have this great looking book on my shelf, I’ll feel compelled to buy all the other books as well, and I’m  leery of falling into that particular pit.

Have any of you out there played the system it’s using? I’d be curious to hear your opinions on it.

 

Board Game Bonanza

Well, not a bonanza, really, but my wife and I picked up Forbidden Island and Pandemic this weekend, and I’ve been researching other board games. We don’t have too many of the modern ones, as we’ve continued role-playing games over the years. A lot of the modern board games people rave about are sort of like “role-playing lite,” like Defenders of the Realm, and I figure if I want that feel I can just run a paper and dice role-playing game.

But there are scads of great looking modern games even apart from those. I’m most drawn to games with ancient civilization building and war themes, as you might expect, and other tactical games. I’ve heard wonderful things about Tigris & Euphrates for years but haven’t picked it up — I don’t imagine my wife would like the conflict aspect of it. (One of the reasons I have gotten into solitaire games is that I can play tactical scenarios that way.)