In a series of three posts, I want to kind of "clean house" as far as my thoughts on various aspects of the current zombie craze. Then, hopefully, I can bury the zombies once and for all.
Hold it. Before I start I should alert you that I am not going to post "spoiler alert" every time I write something. So read on at your own risk. I will spoil as needed about Mad Men, The Walking Dead TV series and the Walking Dead comic book series. Sorry if you learn something you didn't want to know..
I put out a post a few weeks ago entitled "Am I Done with AMC's The Walking Dead?" In short, the current answer to that question is "Well, not yet." After what I saw as a low point in season 2, the show put out some serviceable episodes at the end of the season. Also, the principals have finally left that farm. Looming next season are the shadowy figure of Micchonne, the specter of the prison and the rumored casting of the Governor. There is a LOT to work with there and we'll see whether or not the show can pull it off.
My hopes are not high, though. The second season was slow paced and the poor writing showed an unwillingness to really make the audience feel anything outside of what we were told to feel. A case in point on this was the death of Sophia. After the midseason finale bloodbath, our first episode back (which had HUGE ratings) spent time with characters saying things like "I miss her" and "but this was Sophia." It's a good thing that last line was there because, honestly, she was forgettable. She disappeared before we had any idea who she really was. I would have loved to have seen her fight to survive, being courageous and ultimately failing, but instead she disappeared so early that, without the swelling music and the reactions of the other characters, I'm not sure I would have recognized the zombie teen who came out of that barn as Sophia. It was a precursor of disappointments to come. Characters did stupid things like let Carl wander off or drive off by themselves in the middle of the night unaccompanied. The confrontation between Rick and Shane was on again, then off again, then on again, until its fatal conclusion right before the season finale. The show seemed to wander like we imagine Sophia wandering, unable to find its way, stumbling toward its inevitable death. The last two episodes of the season give me hope, but the show better take lessons from its intellectual lineage: AMC and the comic series by Robert Kirkman.
Let's start with AMC. I've been watching Mad Men on Netflix over the past couple of months. I just watched the season 3 finale, which saw a complete shift in the premises of the show. Don will no longer be married and he will be a partner. Pete, too, will be a partner. It looks like Sal's not coming back. It was earth-shattering and world changing. And it was done with subtlety throughout, a buildup three seasons in the making where, when Betty finally confronts Don, you don't see it coming yet you recognize it as both shocking and inevitable.
Walking Dead TV Lesson One: Show, don't tell! As an English teacher, I know you've all been told this before, but comparing Walking Dead and Mad Men makes this clear. Mad Men shows all the time. You'd better be paying attention when you're watching because that little tug by Betty on Don's secret drawer in his study is building to her stumbling upon the key to that drawer. And that money that Don tried to give his brother is now in that drawer looking suspicious. And those pictures. And that divorce. And the deed to that house. It had all been building for three years and 36 or so episodes. Incredible.
Compare that to The Walking Dead's handling of Shane and Rick. Shane slept with Rick's wife when they both think that Rick is dead. Rick returns. Lori thinks that she can just move on and ignore what happened (like Don Draper!). Shane wants to cling on to whatever they had. He thinks he loves Lori. But instead of letting this slowly build (like it does in Mad Men), The Walking Dead's writers see it as adding excitement to reveal these secrets. Lori tells Rick. Rick admits he suspected it all along, but that baby is his. Okay, time for confrontation. There's nothing left to be said because you writers have let it all out. You've TOLD us what people are feeling and have let the secrets out. But no confrontation and no stewing. Shane tells Lori that the baby is his and that Rick can't take care of her. Another secret. Another chance to let things stew. Instead, at episode's end, Lori tells Rick what Shane had said and makes him out to be a threat, and Rick, who has shown a capacity for killing those who threaten the farm, stares menacingly into the distance. Time for confrontation. So they confront and beat each other up and Rick says "let's move on and put this behind us." WHAT? Whatever happens, there is nothing more here. One of the two will have to kill the other, but now there is no tension to build. The tension was released in the confrontation. Either have a new tension drive them apart or have them follow Rick's advice. But no. That's not what happens at all. Instead, Shane tries to engineer an assassination attempt. The confrontation finally happens, and it's pretty good (especially Shane's zombified return), but it could have been so much better than a series of false starts and stops.
I can't decide if Mad Men has a natural advantage because there are so many characters and a city of millions of potential characters surrounding them. Maybe that means everything is subtle because you are so concerned with your image. Maybe it's the telephone that allows semi-secret (and semi-public) conversations (like Roger's phone conversation with Joan while his drunken twentysomething wife lays on the bed beside him), and the Walking Dead characters are forced together in close quarters, which means their conversation is always, ironically, more public. But I think that's something of a cop-out. Don Draper really has no one. Neither does Rick. Don's perceived (by us, the audience) moral ambiguity is fed by his unwillingness to share things. He doesn't need the phone. He just needs to be silent and to never let others see him sweat. Rick should be the same way. Instead he constantly opens up thematic conversations that just don't work, like the awkward conversation with his son about how everyone dies or the many conversations where he tries to work things out with Shane. Moral ambiguity is at the center of both stories. We are meant to sympathize with characters who are doing things that we may not agree with (Rick kills people; Don sleeps with them). And the more that AMC's The Walking Dead can play with that ambiguity, the more it can make Rick's actions something we both agree and disagree with, the better the show will become.
And that brings us to The Walking Dead, the comic book. One of the striking things about the comic book series is that its characters are so morally ambiguous. A number of characters walk through the story, most die, some few remain. We are drawn to sympathize with Rick and to root for him to survive, but many of his actions are ones that we either cannot agree with or are ones that we can only agree with in the darkest recesses of our vengeful souls. The Rick of the comics is too bossy and too violent. And we are constantly forced to ask ourselves whether or not his actions are justified by the unique circumstances brought about by the zombie apocalypse.
AMC's The Walking Dead struggles with this concept. It tries to present moral ambiguity but instead presents moral inconsistency. It might not even be moral inconsistency that is the problem. It may be a confusion of moral ambiguity with an ambiguous state of sanity.
Rick ends season two by saying to the rest of the group, "you made me kill my best friend." Comics Rick would never have said that. He would have said "I killed Shane. I had to do it and I'm not sorry for it. Deal with it." Instead, television Rick comes off a little whiny and a little crazy (wait -- maybe he's taking on the characteristics of Dale!). We end up questioning whether Rick is sane, not whether what he did is right.
Rick's moral ambiguity is only interesting if characters are there to confront him and disagree with him. Without these viable consciences, the question does not become "was Rick right in killing the men in the bar?" or "was Rick right in killing Shane?" It instead becomes "is Rick going crazy?" It is not and should not be that simple a question.
In the comic book series, Rick has a number of personified consciences confront him. One is the character Tyreese who questions Rick's edict that "You kill; you die." He also confronts and fights with Rick over his decision to kill a decidedly dangerous prison inmate. Who is Rick's Tyreese in the television series? At first, I thought it was T-Dog because of their similar names and ethnic backgrounds. But Tyreese was an ex-NFL star, a man whose physical presence made him tower over Rick and whose physical abilities in a fight made him a powerful ally (at one point, in order to work out the grief over his daughter's death, Tyreese kills a gym full of zombies by himself using a hammer). This also gave him a presence that Rick had to listen to. But T-dog has almost nothing to say. He's not large. He's not that much of an asset in combat (as shown by his inept maiming of himself when confronting the herd at the beginning of season 2). And the writers have given him fewer and fewer lines, to the point where his silence is deafening.
Another conscience for Rick is Dale. In the comics, Dale is gruff and blunt, and Rick values that. There is no nonsense, only a "listen, son --" presence to which Rick responds. The Dale of the comic series ends up in a romantic and sexual relationship with Andrea. And it's believable! Dale is stable; Dale is strong; and Dale is there. But the Dale of the television series came across as whiny and a little crazed. When presenting his case for their need to maintain some moral conscience in the new society they were being forced to form, the television Dale launches a harangue that basically says over and over again "I can't believe no one is on my side." Then Dale dies.
TV Rick's one successful conscience was Shane, who unfortunately was a murderous psychopath. This not only allowed us to dismiss his thinking at some level, it also allowed us to see Rick's seeming crossing over into violence as mode of protection as a crossing over into madness. Rick of the television show is too hopeful, then makes a switch to violence that seems uncharacteristic and seems to mirror the decidedly murderous Shane. Rick of the comics combines the characteristics of both the Rick and Shane characters of the TV show. At times, comics Rick is murderous in his defense of his son and of the group. He is a bit paranoid. But he is also the only consistent vision of hope the series has to offer. He is the strength that allows the group to survive. But he is also the other dangerous, violent side of that strength. It was somewhat interesting to have Shane and Rick debate between hope and pragmatism. As I said to a friend after the mid-season finale, "Shane was right, but if I got separated from the group, I'd want Rick on my side." The Rick of the comic books is more interesting, though. He would fight hard to protect me, but would kill me himself if I endangered the group. And that's interesting. And what else is interesting is that I sympathize with him. I want him and his son to survive. And I want him to find some kind of peace.
My hope, in the end, is that the newly violent TV Rick will succeed in raising the interesting questions that the comic series has raised. Have Rick perform his actions and leave me to debate them. But the writers' constant need to have characters hash out these underlying arguments in an overt and overly simplistic way leaves me little hope. But, you know what, I'll consider that faint hope my own Sophia. And I probably won't abandon the show until it finally comes shuffling out of that barn and leaves me in despair.
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
Prezcon 2012 AAR
On the weekend of February 22-24, I was lucky enough to get the chance to go to Prezcon again this year. I have often thought of changing my "off-season con" to something else. I would like to support my buddy Ric and go to the Block Party in the Louisville area, but it's so far away for an extended weekend. I would like to go to Winter Offensive, but I'm so rusty at ASL. I would like to go to WAM, but there just doesn't seem to be anything there that's really compelling.
And this year, around November, the cry to go to Charlottesville began. Owen was old enough to go and was excited about it. The Sudys would be there. Tom the Tinker was going to be there. Joe was going to be there. Heck, even Scott might come. And, of course, TJ had moved his permanent home there last summer and was even suggesting that I stay at his place. So I commited!
Of course, as seems to be the case in my life these days, as soon as I commit, I pay a price. TJ was the first to drop. He had a business meeting and wouldn't be able to make it. Joe dropped. Even Owen dropped, and he's my son! But a reserved room and the chance to play with Tom the Tinker and the Sudys, not to mention whoever else migh tbere, enticed me to keep my commitment. And then, about a week and a half before departure, Paul, one of my newest gaming buddies, sent an email asking when we would all be there. Things started to fall into place.
I arrived on the night of the 23rd. I rushed out of school in order to make it with as much time as possible. I had time all right. Time to see that Kevin and AJ Sudy. Time to watch Paul and his opponent set up their game of Breakout Normandy. And time to watch Tom the Tinker play his warm-up game of Eastfront. Well, at least it gave me time to watch some back episodes of Mad Men on my iPad.
I was also able to begin scheduling some games. The Sudys and I agreed to meet on Friday morning and I finally got the chance to play. We played Theos, AJ's prototype. In this game, each player represents a world religion spreading its influence across the world. In our particular game, I was Hinduism, Kevin was Buddhism and AJ was Islam. The game involves some interesting mechanics. You have three main characteristics, "Lore" (I believe - basically the idea of the central tenets/text of the faith), "Faith" (your ability to spread within a territory that you already occupy), and "Missionary" (Okay, get your mind out of the gutter. It's the ability to spread your faith around the world). Each of these acts as a different currency, allowing you to perform certain actions and controllling the way you spread. At this point, the prototype also has a multi-option track where you gained cetain bunuses (more missionary points, a higher ship value, more VP). You cold spend your points on this track or use them to spread on the map. It was surprisingly quick for a game that resembled History of the World. There may have been a brief balance issue with Islam, especially as Islam had to compete with Hinduisim and Buddhism. We talked out some options about changing gameplay then headed over the vendors.
The pickings were sparse at the vendors. I ended up only buying one game (!). I feel bad, like I let down my collector brethren, but what can you do? I noticed at the Z-Man games booth the game Junta:Viva la Revolucion! As I turned the game back and forth in my hand, admiring its design and pricetag, the clerk in the Z-Man booth said "Oh, that game -- it's basically a beer and pretzels versions of Junta." WHAT? I blinked twice. Junta WAS a beer and pretzels game.It was kind of like saying "It's a Will Ferrell movie, but this one is a comedy." I couldn't quite wrap my brain around it, but I was good buying it anyway.
So I did get to play the game a couple of times during the con. It was light. It was more beer and pretzels than the original. Really, they removed the wargaming element. And what did we play Junta for? It was for the betrayals, the fun of illegally stashing away your embezzlements from the banana republic and the fun of trying to catch each other off guard for an assassination. While stashing away the ill-gotten gains has been changed thematically from squirreling it away in a swiss bank account in the original to an investment system in the current game, those key elements remained. Honestly, the wargaming component of the original Junta was overblown. It actually could cause the game to crawl (I remember the last time I played the game we launched a coup every turn. It was brutal and it pretty much made the game dead to me). So, this is light. It's not a great game, but it's not that bad. We played it with three players, which caused some weirdness with assassinations, but I would like to play it again with more. It is filler material, not the main game of the night, but it will probably find my table again.
I also got to play the new Academy Games offering, 1812: Clash for a Continent. Walking away from my disappointing excursion to the vendors, we encountered a "bonus vendor" in the hotel atrium. I'm not sure who exactly the booth belonged to (sorry, vendor!), but it catered to Academy Games products and Defenders of the Realm and its expansions. The best part about this particular vendor was its stragegically placed location next to the open gaming areas.
I was probably going to buy 1812: Clash for a Continent any way. The game looked somewhat interesting. It was a hybrid (one of my weak spots these days). And, of course, I have an addiction to buying games. But I stayed in a state of denial about this purchase just long enough for one of the salespeople at the booth to offer to teach 1812 to me and my friends, Kevin and AJ.
Not a bad game! The game is a standard, Risk-style, move and shoot game. EXCEPT each army involved has its own special dice - the Brits are good at killing and not running away, the French are good at killing, but may run away, and the militia might kill, but are more likely to run away. Oh, and the game is card driven. EXCEPT you will play every card in your deck once and only once. And did I mention that the game could be played with 2, 3, 4, or 5 players? There has been some criticism about how effective a multiplayer game it is because you play in teams. But I have played it with 3 and 4 players, and it seemed to work fine, certainly no more awkwardly than Middle Earth Quest. Bottom line: the game played fast and had some interesting decisions to it. It's not an incredible game, but it is definitely one I will play again.
Speaking of Middle Earth Quest, Kevin and I were able to squeeze in two games at Prezcon. We introduced a newbie to the game (sorry again, forgot your name and should have recorded it somewhere). He went running off to the vendors to buy his own copy of the game, so I guess you could say it was a success. We seem to be seeing a rise in the powers of darkness lately, with Sauron becoming more and more difficult to defeat. I think it just means that we'll adjust the way we play the heroes in the game and the game will balance itself again. Of course, if it ends up being a game where Sauron wins most of the time and the heroes are scrambling to prevent the triumph of evil, that seems to work thematically so it's okay with me.
The last game I want to report on is my third play of FAB: Sicily. This was an extra cool session for two reasons. Reason One: I got to play with Rick Young. Rick is a good friend with whom I love to play and with whom I don't get enough chances to play. Rick convinced me that Point 2 Point is NOT dead and that people would still like to hear from me, even if it were twice a year (a post-WBC year in review and a Holiday Special). I might be able to do that. I'll at least try it for Rick's sake.
The second reason was I finally played it right! That's not to say my son and I were playing it completely randomly or anything. Far from it. The majority of the game we were playing correctly. But there still were minor things we had been doing wrong, and Rick was able to point those out during the course of play. Needless to say, Rick's Allied forces crushed my Axis ones, but it was not immediate and it was fun to play. Verdict on FAB: Sicily? It's a good one. It's its own game, like all Rick Young games. This one focuses more on choosing invasion sites and using your airborne troops effectively and less on getting your armor to where it can exploit (which is one of the main focal points of FAB:Bulge).
So that wraps up the first in what I hope will be a series of blog posts in the coming weeks. I needed to get the Prezcon AAR out of the way. I am sorry it took so long. Bottom line on Prezcon: it's small, but a good time. There is something of a personal touch to it, which I love, and the venue is one of the nicest I have ever been in for a con.
Stay tuned and subscribe at anextrapoint.blogspot.com. I have some more to write, including: a series of zombie posts (another on the AMC series, one on Romero's movie series, and one on boardgaming with zombies - which I'll crosspost to BGG), one on an 80's fantasy television series I've been re-watching, and more on gaming - not sure what this one will be, maybe on the disappointment of hex and counter gaming (say it ain't so!).
And this year, around November, the cry to go to Charlottesville began. Owen was old enough to go and was excited about it. The Sudys would be there. Tom the Tinker was going to be there. Joe was going to be there. Heck, even Scott might come. And, of course, TJ had moved his permanent home there last summer and was even suggesting that I stay at his place. So I commited!
Of course, as seems to be the case in my life these days, as soon as I commit, I pay a price. TJ was the first to drop. He had a business meeting and wouldn't be able to make it. Joe dropped. Even Owen dropped, and he's my son! But a reserved room and the chance to play with Tom the Tinker and the Sudys, not to mention whoever else migh tbere, enticed me to keep my commitment. And then, about a week and a half before departure, Paul, one of my newest gaming buddies, sent an email asking when we would all be there. Things started to fall into place.
I arrived on the night of the 23rd. I rushed out of school in order to make it with as much time as possible. I had time all right. Time to see that Kevin and AJ Sudy. Time to watch Paul and his opponent set up their game of Breakout Normandy. And time to watch Tom the Tinker play his warm-up game of Eastfront. Well, at least it gave me time to watch some back episodes of Mad Men on my iPad.
I was also able to begin scheduling some games. The Sudys and I agreed to meet on Friday morning and I finally got the chance to play. We played Theos, AJ's prototype. In this game, each player represents a world religion spreading its influence across the world. In our particular game, I was Hinduism, Kevin was Buddhism and AJ was Islam. The game involves some interesting mechanics. You have three main characteristics, "Lore" (I believe - basically the idea of the central tenets/text of the faith), "Faith" (your ability to spread within a territory that you already occupy), and "Missionary" (Okay, get your mind out of the gutter. It's the ability to spread your faith around the world). Each of these acts as a different currency, allowing you to perform certain actions and controllling the way you spread. At this point, the prototype also has a multi-option track where you gained cetain bunuses (more missionary points, a higher ship value, more VP). You cold spend your points on this track or use them to spread on the map. It was surprisingly quick for a game that resembled History of the World. There may have been a brief balance issue with Islam, especially as Islam had to compete with Hinduisim and Buddhism. We talked out some options about changing gameplay then headed over the vendors.
The pickings were sparse at the vendors. I ended up only buying one game (!). I feel bad, like I let down my collector brethren, but what can you do? I noticed at the Z-Man games booth the game Junta:Viva la Revolucion! As I turned the game back and forth in my hand, admiring its design and pricetag, the clerk in the Z-Man booth said "Oh, that game -- it's basically a beer and pretzels versions of Junta." WHAT? I blinked twice. Junta WAS a beer and pretzels game.It was kind of like saying "It's a Will Ferrell movie, but this one is a comedy." I couldn't quite wrap my brain around it, but I was good buying it anyway.
So I did get to play the game a couple of times during the con. It was light. It was more beer and pretzels than the original. Really, they removed the wargaming element. And what did we play Junta for? It was for the betrayals, the fun of illegally stashing away your embezzlements from the banana republic and the fun of trying to catch each other off guard for an assassination. While stashing away the ill-gotten gains has been changed thematically from squirreling it away in a swiss bank account in the original to an investment system in the current game, those key elements remained. Honestly, the wargaming component of the original Junta was overblown. It actually could cause the game to crawl (I remember the last time I played the game we launched a coup every turn. It was brutal and it pretty much made the game dead to me). So, this is light. It's not a great game, but it's not that bad. We played it with three players, which caused some weirdness with assassinations, but I would like to play it again with more. It is filler material, not the main game of the night, but it will probably find my table again.
I also got to play the new Academy Games offering, 1812: Clash for a Continent. Walking away from my disappointing excursion to the vendors, we encountered a "bonus vendor" in the hotel atrium. I'm not sure who exactly the booth belonged to (sorry, vendor!), but it catered to Academy Games products and Defenders of the Realm and its expansions. The best part about this particular vendor was its stragegically placed location next to the open gaming areas.
I was probably going to buy 1812: Clash for a Continent any way. The game looked somewhat interesting. It was a hybrid (one of my weak spots these days). And, of course, I have an addiction to buying games. But I stayed in a state of denial about this purchase just long enough for one of the salespeople at the booth to offer to teach 1812 to me and my friends, Kevin and AJ.
Not a bad game! The game is a standard, Risk-style, move and shoot game. EXCEPT each army involved has its own special dice - the Brits are good at killing and not running away, the French are good at killing, but may run away, and the militia might kill, but are more likely to run away. Oh, and the game is card driven. EXCEPT you will play every card in your deck once and only once. And did I mention that the game could be played with 2, 3, 4, or 5 players? There has been some criticism about how effective a multiplayer game it is because you play in teams. But I have played it with 3 and 4 players, and it seemed to work fine, certainly no more awkwardly than Middle Earth Quest. Bottom line: the game played fast and had some interesting decisions to it. It's not an incredible game, but it is definitely one I will play again.
Speaking of Middle Earth Quest, Kevin and I were able to squeeze in two games at Prezcon. We introduced a newbie to the game (sorry again, forgot your name and should have recorded it somewhere). He went running off to the vendors to buy his own copy of the game, so I guess you could say it was a success. We seem to be seeing a rise in the powers of darkness lately, with Sauron becoming more and more difficult to defeat. I think it just means that we'll adjust the way we play the heroes in the game and the game will balance itself again. Of course, if it ends up being a game where Sauron wins most of the time and the heroes are scrambling to prevent the triumph of evil, that seems to work thematically so it's okay with me.
The last game I want to report on is my third play of FAB: Sicily. This was an extra cool session for two reasons. Reason One: I got to play with Rick Young. Rick is a good friend with whom I love to play and with whom I don't get enough chances to play. Rick convinced me that Point 2 Point is NOT dead and that people would still like to hear from me, even if it were twice a year (a post-WBC year in review and a Holiday Special). I might be able to do that. I'll at least try it for Rick's sake.
The second reason was I finally played it right! That's not to say my son and I were playing it completely randomly or anything. Far from it. The majority of the game we were playing correctly. But there still were minor things we had been doing wrong, and Rick was able to point those out during the course of play. Needless to say, Rick's Allied forces crushed my Axis ones, but it was not immediate and it was fun to play. Verdict on FAB: Sicily? It's a good one. It's its own game, like all Rick Young games. This one focuses more on choosing invasion sites and using your airborne troops effectively and less on getting your armor to where it can exploit (which is one of the main focal points of FAB:Bulge).
So that wraps up the first in what I hope will be a series of blog posts in the coming weeks. I needed to get the Prezcon AAR out of the way. I am sorry it took so long. Bottom line on Prezcon: it's small, but a good time. There is something of a personal touch to it, which I love, and the venue is one of the nicest I have ever been in for a con.
Stay tuned and subscribe at anextrapoint.blogspot.com. I have some more to write, including: a series of zombie posts (another on the AMC series, one on Romero's movie series, and one on boardgaming with zombies - which I'll crosspost to BGG), one on an 80's fantasy television series I've been re-watching, and more on gaming - not sure what this one will be, maybe on the disappointment of hex and counter gaming (say it ain't so!).
Monday, February 20, 2012
Am I Done with AMC's The Walking Dead?
First off, a distinction. I am making a distinction between AMC's The Walking Dead and the excellent comic The Walking Dead. I am NOT done with that. Far from it. I have really enjoyed the growth of Andrea's character and Rick's attempts to be moral while doing decidedly controversial things and making huge mistakes along the way. But, more on that another time.
Secondly, a warning. This may contain spoilers. If it does, thank me. I saved you from watching this episode.
Last night's episode, "Triggerfinger," showed me that the show had lost a great deal of its mojo. Now, they are simply tacking on drama to the show and at times doing it in a half-assed way. Need some drama? How about introducing some living antagonists that are boorish northerners. Instead of a herd encountered on a highway or a high school full of zombies, now we get a smattering of them here and there. They seem to have lost focus in a lot of ways. They seem to be missing the obvious drama right before them.
How could The Walking Dead build drama more effectively?
1. Bring back zombies! What happened to them? There is a lot of plot building and world building to do here. Seeing the bloated zombie in the well was interesting. Seeing the herd was interesting. There is a lot to learn about how the zombies operate and move about. Instead they seem to be the occasional bone they throw the watcher. This really struck me in the mid-season finale when Shane confronts Rick about the danger he put everyone in as they stayed behind and searched for Sophia. Shane was right in a sense, but, according to the action of the show he was dead wrong. In the world the show has created, they could stay on the farm indefinitely. The extended time not moving seemed to have cost them nothing. They lost Sophia on the highway, not the farm. The farm seems to only encounter a zombie or two every few episodes, and they lost NO ONE in the search for Sophia (other than Otis who was lost indirectly due to Sophia). The show tried to create a conflict, an idea of Rick's hope contrasting with Shane's cold pragmatism. But Rick's hope is much more pragmatic. The zombies aren't a threat here at all.
2. Find a new direction. Okay, so in last episode, we learned that Fort Benning is not a viable option. But this was from a decidedly unreliable source. And just because one direction is cut off, doesn't mean another is not open. The Nebraska idea is a good one. But, whatever they decide, they need to GET OFF THE FARM. I am sick of the barn (especially now that it's no longer a looming threat). I'm sick of Glen and Maggie (I get it, young love and all that). I'm sick of the pointing fingers and threats that never seem to come to fruition. If this is a show about people, great. I want that. But what separates this from Mad Men is its unique world. We should be learning about people as they try to exist in a post-apocalyptic world, not as they try to figure out when certain are allowed to eat at the table or use the kitchen. This space has been explored. Move on.
3. Teach us something about this new world. This probably goes along with number 2, but we need to learn something about the world around them. In the comic, they have gone to a gated community (bad idea), a prison (somewhat good idea), Woodbury (I wonder if this will ever happen in the show?), a military base, a newly formed, fortified community, and now they are realizing there are others out there. We've seen Atlanta, I-95, and Washington, DC (and its suburbs). I know it's had a longer run, but we need to see something out there other than this farm.
4. Kill, hurt, or maim someone we care about. I wish I had gotten to know Sophia. I was so unfamiliar with her that, without the dramatic music and the staring characters, I am not sure I would have recognized her. It was creepy to have to kill a zombie child. I know because the first sequence in the show's premiere showed Rick killing one. Then they went back to the well. And, while it was dramatic, it lacked the power it could have had. Last night, they had a chance. Lori was taking off her shirt. What if she had been bitten? Wow. What if she was maimed and Shane had to fight off zombie hordes while they came to rescue her? Instead, life moves on and the show does not. Now we have manufactured a showdown between Rick and Shane. Really? The tension was there. All that had to happen was Shane has to make a move. Instead, the increasingly disappointing show felt the need to have Lori spell out exactly what the conflict is and we have to judge from Rick's expression how homicidal he is. I hope it at least goes somewhere. Maybe it just means Rick will make Shane take a turn doing the laundry.
Maybe all of this is related to the show's budget cuts. Certainly, it costs money to film on location and to create zombies. If so, this is a budget cut that will kill The Walking Dead. It is leaving the show stranded in one location where it is only capable of spinning in circles and manufacturing drama. Lori flipping in the car was one of the most obvious gimicks I have seen in a show. She's flipped, she may be dying. Nope, she's fine. The flip was just to get us to tune back in a week. The problem is the classic "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice..." dilemma. I have to ask myself: is the show going anywhere? Or is it another failed attempt at a genre show? The hay is most likely in the barn on this one and we'll see where things go from here. My hopes are dwindling, my DVR space is valuable, and my viewing time is limited. And this show may not be good enough to make the cut.
Secondly, a warning. This may contain spoilers. If it does, thank me. I saved you from watching this episode.
Last night's episode, "Triggerfinger," showed me that the show had lost a great deal of its mojo. Now, they are simply tacking on drama to the show and at times doing it in a half-assed way. Need some drama? How about introducing some living antagonists that are boorish northerners. Instead of a herd encountered on a highway or a high school full of zombies, now we get a smattering of them here and there. They seem to have lost focus in a lot of ways. They seem to be missing the obvious drama right before them.
How could The Walking Dead build drama more effectively?
1. Bring back zombies! What happened to them? There is a lot of plot building and world building to do here. Seeing the bloated zombie in the well was interesting. Seeing the herd was interesting. There is a lot to learn about how the zombies operate and move about. Instead they seem to be the occasional bone they throw the watcher. This really struck me in the mid-season finale when Shane confronts Rick about the danger he put everyone in as they stayed behind and searched for Sophia. Shane was right in a sense, but, according to the action of the show he was dead wrong. In the world the show has created, they could stay on the farm indefinitely. The extended time not moving seemed to have cost them nothing. They lost Sophia on the highway, not the farm. The farm seems to only encounter a zombie or two every few episodes, and they lost NO ONE in the search for Sophia (other than Otis who was lost indirectly due to Sophia). The show tried to create a conflict, an idea of Rick's hope contrasting with Shane's cold pragmatism. But Rick's hope is much more pragmatic. The zombies aren't a threat here at all.
2. Find a new direction. Okay, so in last episode, we learned that Fort Benning is not a viable option. But this was from a decidedly unreliable source. And just because one direction is cut off, doesn't mean another is not open. The Nebraska idea is a good one. But, whatever they decide, they need to GET OFF THE FARM. I am sick of the barn (especially now that it's no longer a looming threat). I'm sick of Glen and Maggie (I get it, young love and all that). I'm sick of the pointing fingers and threats that never seem to come to fruition. If this is a show about people, great. I want that. But what separates this from Mad Men is its unique world. We should be learning about people as they try to exist in a post-apocalyptic world, not as they try to figure out when certain are allowed to eat at the table or use the kitchen. This space has been explored. Move on.
3. Teach us something about this new world. This probably goes along with number 2, but we need to learn something about the world around them. In the comic, they have gone to a gated community (bad idea), a prison (somewhat good idea), Woodbury (I wonder if this will ever happen in the show?), a military base, a newly formed, fortified community, and now they are realizing there are others out there. We've seen Atlanta, I-95, and Washington, DC (and its suburbs). I know it's had a longer run, but we need to see something out there other than this farm.
4. Kill, hurt, or maim someone we care about. I wish I had gotten to know Sophia. I was so unfamiliar with her that, without the dramatic music and the staring characters, I am not sure I would have recognized her. It was creepy to have to kill a zombie child. I know because the first sequence in the show's premiere showed Rick killing one. Then they went back to the well. And, while it was dramatic, it lacked the power it could have had. Last night, they had a chance. Lori was taking off her shirt. What if she had been bitten? Wow. What if she was maimed and Shane had to fight off zombie hordes while they came to rescue her? Instead, life moves on and the show does not. Now we have manufactured a showdown between Rick and Shane. Really? The tension was there. All that had to happen was Shane has to make a move. Instead, the increasingly disappointing show felt the need to have Lori spell out exactly what the conflict is and we have to judge from Rick's expression how homicidal he is. I hope it at least goes somewhere. Maybe it just means Rick will make Shane take a turn doing the laundry.
Maybe all of this is related to the show's budget cuts. Certainly, it costs money to film on location and to create zombies. If so, this is a budget cut that will kill The Walking Dead. It is leaving the show stranded in one location where it is only capable of spinning in circles and manufacturing drama. Lori flipping in the car was one of the most obvious gimicks I have seen in a show. She's flipped, she may be dying. Nope, she's fine. The flip was just to get us to tune back in a week. The problem is the classic "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice..." dilemma. I have to ask myself: is the show going anywhere? Or is it another failed attempt at a genre show? The hay is most likely in the barn on this one and we'll see where things go from here. My hopes are dwindling, my DVR space is valuable, and my viewing time is limited. And this show may not be good enough to make the cut.
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
On Charles Dickens's 200th Birthday
Well, I have some other blog posts slowly brewing in my "drafts" folder, but today's auspicious anniversary makes me feel the need to post immediately.
When I logged onto my home computer today, I noticed the artistic rendering of "Google." A quick scroll-over revealed that it was Charles Dickens's 200th birthday. It is an anniversary that will probably pass unremarked-upon by most. It may even elicit some grumbles from others. They remember struggling through Great Expectations or A Tale of Two Cities. They remember his long-winded prose and the foisting of it upon their young minds. These people who complain about Dickens are not limited to the illiterate or even to those whose artistic tastes have been numbed by so much reality television. Unfortunately, many of the people I know who will grumble today are English teachers.
Dickens is, for me, one of the greatest writers in history. He may be the greatest novelist in history. But for a few generations now he has gone unappreciated. Many high schools will limit their Dickens reading to one of the aforementioned novels, with "A Christmas Carol" thrown in on occasion. The sentences are long and the prose can be difficult. And we have, over time, slowly begun to shelve Dickens alongside other largely forgotten British and American authors such as James Fennimore Cooper or John Milton.
And we have lost something here. Dickens is a master of characterization. Sometimes his characters are largely stereotypes, some of them racist stereotypes (such as Oliver Twist's Fagin the Jew). But that may undersell them. They seem many times to almost be archetypal characters, characters that we recognize in our own lives. By way of example, I offer the first chapter of his Hard Times:
When I logged onto my home computer today, I noticed the artistic rendering of "Google." A quick scroll-over revealed that it was Charles Dickens's 200th birthday. It is an anniversary that will probably pass unremarked-upon by most. It may even elicit some grumbles from others. They remember struggling through Great Expectations or A Tale of Two Cities. They remember his long-winded prose and the foisting of it upon their young minds. These people who complain about Dickens are not limited to the illiterate or even to those whose artistic tastes have been numbed by so much reality television. Unfortunately, many of the people I know who will grumble today are English teachers.
Dickens is, for me, one of the greatest writers in history. He may be the greatest novelist in history. But for a few generations now he has gone unappreciated. Many high schools will limit their Dickens reading to one of the aforementioned novels, with "A Christmas Carol" thrown in on occasion. The sentences are long and the prose can be difficult. And we have, over time, slowly begun to shelve Dickens alongside other largely forgotten British and American authors such as James Fennimore Cooper or John Milton.
And we have lost something here. Dickens is a master of characterization. Sometimes his characters are largely stereotypes, some of them racist stereotypes (such as Oliver Twist's Fagin the Jew). But that may undersell them. They seem many times to almost be archetypal characters, characters that we recognize in our own lives. By way of example, I offer the first chapter of his Hard Times:
'NOW, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!'
The scene was a plain, bare, monotonous vault of a school-room, and the speaker's square forefinger emphasized his observations by underscoring every sentence with a line on the schoolmaster's sleeve. The emphasis was helped by the speaker's square wall of a forehead, which had his eyebrows for its base, while his eyes found commodious cellarage in two dark caves, overshadowed by the wall. The emphasis was helped by the speaker's mouth, which was wide, thin, and hard set. The emphasis was helped by the speaker's voice, which was inflexible, dry, and dictatorial. The emphasis was helped by the speaker's hair, which bristled on the skirts of his bald head, a plantation of firs to keep the wind from its shining surface, all covered with knobs, like the crust of a plum pie, as if the head had scarcely warehouse-room for the hard facts stored inside. The speaker's obstinate carriage, square coat, square legs, square shoulders, - nay, his very neckcloth, trained to take him by the throat with an unaccommodating grasp, like a stubborn fact, as it was, - all helped the emphasis.
'In this life, we want nothing but Facts, sir; nothing but Facts!'
The speaker, and the schoolmaster, and the third grown person present, all backed a little, and swept with their eyes the inclined plane of little vessels then and there arranged in order, ready to have imperial gallons of facts poured into them until they were full to the brim.
Dickens offers us the imperious schoolteacher, the teacher who is willing to push his sole view of the world on his students uncompromisingly. He is a character that we all, even in the twenty-first century, recognize. And his singular view of the world, repeated over and over again in an almost fractal pattern in Dickens's prose, is that the only thing that matters in the world are facts. Not love, not honor, not interhuman relations. Just the facts, ma'am. And Dickens's closing metaphor, of the "little vessels" and the "imperial gallons" that are going to fill them, shows an excess and bombardment of these very facts that will end up warping a whole generation.
He very intentionally batters us with the "emphasis" of this worldview. He shows us the metaphorical choking effect that living life solely by "facts" can have on a person. He forces the idea on the reader in much the same way that our instructor foists it upon his charges.
Dickens also foreshadows the main action of the novel: the very warping that our archetypal instructor is inflicting upon his students has also been inflicted on his own children. And that warping is the central tragedy of the tale. And if you didn't get it through his very short first chapter, don't worry, the title of the second clues us in further. It is entitled "Murdering the Innocents."
Dickens is long-winded. Twenty-first century readers are used to "sound-bytes" and quick cuts in films. They are used to an immediacy that would have been completely alien to Dickens. But this prolix writing also allows for playfulness and for repetition. I see it as kind of like watching an old movie. The pacing is unfamiliar. It's off. It takes too long to get to a point. But there's a refinement and subtlety that this slow pacing allows that has been lost to current readers.
So I greet his 200th birthday with mixed emotions. I am happy that Google still sees Dickens as worthy of its title page. But I also see the day when Dickens will be someone we have all but forgotten. His irony, his wit and his subtlety are slowly passing away. I won't condemn what comes to replace it. I certainly love the breakneck pacing of todays media and I am certainly a consumer of sound-bites. But I would prefer to see Dickens appreciated alongside our current media.
Of course, that's my heart speaking. The "facts" tell me otherwise.
Sunday, January 15, 2012
The Evolution of Deck Management in Card Driven Wargames
The evolution of the Card Driven Wargame (CDG) continues.
I have played A Few Acres of Snow approximately ten times since I bought it about a week before the WBC. Through about seven of these games, I was beginning to feel that it could be one of my favorite games. Then I learned of the Killer Strategy (not too hard to stumble upon, mind you), and I must confess that trying to "unbreak" the game in the last few plays has been a bit of drudgery. But now Martin Wallace has released his rules changes and I am hopeful of this once again becoming a gem in my collection.
Even if the rules revisions cannot fix the game, it is a fascinating game in what it represents: the next stage of the evolution of the CDG. In particular, it marks a further evolution in a key aspect of CDGs, the ability to manage the deck from which you draw.
I have played A Few Acres of Snow approximately ten times since I bought it about a week before the WBC. Through about seven of these games, I was beginning to feel that it could be one of my favorite games. Then I learned of the Killer Strategy (not too hard to stumble upon, mind you), and I must confess that trying to "unbreak" the game in the last few plays has been a bit of drudgery. But now Martin Wallace has released his rules changes and I am hopeful of this once again becoming a gem in my collection.
Even if the rules revisions cannot fix the game, it is a fascinating game in what it represents: the next stage of the evolution of the CDG. In particular, it marks a further evolution in a key aspect of CDGs, the ability to manage the deck from which you draw.
Contrary from what some people think, I actually do NOT like randomness in games. I'll post more on this at another time, but let's just say this for now: I like randomness only if it can be managed at some level.
In CDGs, this many times takes the form of deck management.
The first CDGs had very little of deck management. There was one deck, and both sides drew from it. In We the People (now Washington's War), each card was either an event or a number of operations points. In Hannibal: Rome vs. Carthage, this evolved into cards that had both Ops points AND an event. But drawing from a common deck could very easily leave you with a session where your opponent received all of your key events.
A case in point would be Wilderness War from GMT Games. I play the tournament scenario, and, in this scenario, a key event is the "Highlanders" card which allows the British player to receive four more of the most powerful unit in the game, the Highlanders, along with two leaders (one of which is the ultra-poweful Wolfe). There are "smaller Highlanders" cards that allow the drawing of one of these units along with one of these leaders, but the "big Highlanders" card, as it has come to be called, can be a game changer. It is easy to imagine a scenario where this important card cycles through to the French player, he plays it for Operations, then, after a reshuffle, it again ends up with the French player. The odds are basically 50/50 each time, and, as we remember from that Stats class in college (the class designed for gamers), the odds that the French player is the only one to see the card is approximately (the random events causing a reshuffle affect this) 1 in 4. We can see this in Hannibal with the overly powerful Messenger Intercepted card, which allows you to steal an opponent's card and make it your own, giving you another event vs. ops choice, but, more importantly, giving you effectively two more action than your opponent. And after it is played, there is a 50/50 chance that the same player could get the same event back in his hand. The common deck needed some kind of improvement.
A case in point would be Wilderness War from GMT Games. I play the tournament scenario, and, in this scenario, a key event is the "Highlanders" card which allows the British player to receive four more of the most powerful unit in the game, the Highlanders, along with two leaders (one of which is the ultra-poweful Wolfe). There are "smaller Highlanders" cards that allow the drawing of one of these units along with one of these leaders, but the "big Highlanders" card, as it has come to be called, can be a game changer. It is easy to imagine a scenario where this important card cycles through to the French player, he plays it for Operations, then, after a reshuffle, it again ends up with the French player. The odds are basically 50/50 each time, and, as we remember from that Stats class in college (the class designed for gamers), the odds that the French player is the only one to see the card is approximately (the random events causing a reshuffle affect this) 1 in 4. We can see this in Hannibal with the overly powerful Messenger Intercepted card, which allows you to steal an opponent's card and make it your own, giving you another event vs. ops choice, but, more importantly, giving you effectively two more action than your opponent. And after it is played, there is a 50/50 chance that the same player could get the same event back in his hand. The common deck needed some kind of improvement.
Paths of Glory greatly improved the ability to manage the chaos in your deck. It actually is fairly brilliant and offers a system that, while not used very often, is one that may not have been surpassed until A Few Acres of Snow (and that may be overstating it - Paths of Glory's system may actually be superior to that of A Few Acres when all is said and done).
With Paths of Gory, each side had his own deck. This considerably increased the likelihood that your events would come up (I would say that it meant seeing your events was a certainty, but I suppose with poor management, key events may never come up). And it meant that you would not end up with a handful of your opponent's events.
Your deck was also divided into sub-decks. You now had your own Mobilization deck, along with a Limited War and Total War deck. The importance of this cannot be overstated. This was a rather direct way to simulate the escalating resources along with the escalating obligations of an escalating war. The goal of most players was to get to Total War as fast as possible. This was where the really powerful events were, and the larger operations cards started to appear in the Limited War decks. But you had to survive and fight while navigating through the less powerful Mobilization deck.
Also, this game was the first to feature significant culling of the deck as a player option. A number of events, including reinforcement cards, were discarded upon use. Other 2 Ops events were removed from play after use. This led to the development of a tactic called "cleaning your deck," where you understood what events were important to play as events and what events it was important just to remove from your deck. If you were skillfull at this, you saw certain 3, 4, and 5 Ops cards again and again, and drag was not created in your hand by the continuous drawing of 2 Ops cards.
In a lot of ways, this marks the beginning of the deck-building game. It was rather simplistic, with a War Status value that increased as certain events were played. As this War Status hit certain levels, new cards were shuffled into your deck. Your deck became larger as the game continued. But you also thinned your deck whenever possible, and chose carefully what to play as events and what to play as Ops. So, in the end, the most effective deck was the thin one where all weak cards had been culled and only a series of strong cards that you kept re-drawing remained. That sounds awfully similar to deck-building to me.
I'm not sure that this deck management system has ever been surpassed. Heck, I would say it hasn't even been matched. People have tried and tried, but the fine balance of what each deck and sub-deck should have, along with the relative importance of each event, has been something of a nightmare, it seems. It has led to some interesting games, but many of them seem to have flaws that, for whatever reason, Paths of Glory has avoided.
After Paths of Glory, there was very little innovation. The most remarkable was the "split ops" system that Napoleonic Wars employed and which grew into the system used by the very successful Here I Stand. But very little has been done in regards to deck management. Twilight Struggle has an interesting shared deck system where there are sub-decks and where, when you receive your opponent's events, you use the Ops and your opponent gets the event. This leads to an interesting management strategy where you play your own events for Ops so that they will, at some point, end up in your opponent's hand where he will be forced to allow you to play your own event.
It should also be noted that, as far as deck management goes, The Hammer of the Scots system of Columbia Games actually takes it a step backwards. In their system, you have a small (25 card) shared deck with 5 or so events. Also, in this system, each card represents an operations value OR an event, not both. It goes back to the We The People system in many ways but leaves us even more in the throws of randomness where I could have, turn after turn, a fist full of events or a fist full of 1's, while my opponent in moving his armies all over the board. The game works, and works well, but it is in spite of its overly simplistic deck management system.
But I digress...
For me, the next interesting refinement in deck management in wargames is Martin Wallace's A Few Acres of Snow. I won't debate whether it is a wargame or not; I certainly enjoy it and find the conflict satisfying, which is enough for me. What I really find interesting, though, is the system of deck management that the game uses. Wallace's design really doesn't trace a direct lineage with the CDG system that Herman developed. It draws its inspiration and lineage from eurogame mechanics, in particular the "deck-building" mechanism used in a game like Dominion.
Wallace has each player start with a minimal deck. Every turn, each player has two actions, which may use some, all, or none of the cards in his hand. The player then replenishes the deck up to his hand of five. The cards in this very small deck appear again and again, but they are limited in possibility and in power.
But each player has two larger decks which can be added, piece by piece, into his personal playing deck. We are already beyond We the People at this point in that each player has his own two decks to draw from (along with a very small shared deck). Add to this the characteristics of the two decks that each player has. Each player has an "empire" deck, where such imperial resources as military units, native american recruits, and even a governor can be brought into your playing deck. As an action, you simply add one of these cards to your deck (sometimes paying a cost in gold).
The second deck is a deck of locations. As you build a settlement in a location, you gain that card's location card. Most cards will allow you the possibility of exploring a few new locations. Many times, these location cards will give you more resources. Sometimes, it may be a "bateau" symbol allowing you to populate further down the map's rivers. Sometimes, it may be a ship, giving you a number of possibilities including piracy. Sometimes, it might be a military unit. Many locations give you multiple options of how to use it in a particular turn.
Sometimes, the location card may not be useful at all.
Two interesting advancements are presented here. The first is the idea of choice. You are choosing, through settlement of a location or simply purchasing an empire card, what you are adding to your deck. Each choice defines your power, rather than having your power defined by the dictated next deck in line. Broadly speaking, each card you choose pushes you down a path of being an offensive military power, a Native American-allied raider, or an explorer and settler. You decide which military units you add to your deck, defensive units such as fortresses and militia or offensive units such as infantry.
And every choice you make causes your deck to become thicker. This is the second advancement. As your empire grows, if you're not careful, it will become bloated. You may end up having to add useless cards because the location had some other use for you (like a spot from which to launch raids). But while the location is useful, the card may becomes dross in your deck and hand. It models very nicely the effect of having a bloated, growing empire actually limit its own power through its inability to streamline operations. It also models nicely the escalation of war where, with enough escalation, your decisions become dictated by the resources that you have made available. You get into conflicts and situations that you cannot get out of because of the way that your empire expanded.
With these deck-building mechanics, A Few Acres of Snow represents the next logical step in the evolution of card driven wargames. The cards give the players the difficult choices we all crave. They also model very nicely the escalation of responsibility that comes along with an escalation of power. The idea of "a clean deck," discussed so often in Paths of Glory, is a key function in A Few Acres of Snow. Every card you add to your deck causes you to have to think about its thickness. More cards (the Governor or the Trader, for instance) will be added to your deck in order to streamline it. And, of course, each choice you make to streamline your deck involves taking an action in order to do so.
I cannot wait to see how else the deck-building idea can be incorporated into wargames. It means choice in how you build your power base and it means there is no one, in the end, to blame but yourself when your power structure becomes bloated and inefficient. A year ago, I could have written this blog entry and declared the Card Driven Wargame dead. Today, Martin Wallace and A Few Acres of Snow (with a nod to Dominion) have breathed new life and new possibilities into it.
Your deck was also divided into sub-decks. You now had your own Mobilization deck, along with a Limited War and Total War deck. The importance of this cannot be overstated. This was a rather direct way to simulate the escalating resources along with the escalating obligations of an escalating war. The goal of most players was to get to Total War as fast as possible. This was where the really powerful events were, and the larger operations cards started to appear in the Limited War decks. But you had to survive and fight while navigating through the less powerful Mobilization deck.
Also, this game was the first to feature significant culling of the deck as a player option. A number of events, including reinforcement cards, were discarded upon use. Other 2 Ops events were removed from play after use. This led to the development of a tactic called "cleaning your deck," where you understood what events were important to play as events and what events it was important just to remove from your deck. If you were skillfull at this, you saw certain 3, 4, and 5 Ops cards again and again, and drag was not created in your hand by the continuous drawing of 2 Ops cards.
In a lot of ways, this marks the beginning of the deck-building game. It was rather simplistic, with a War Status value that increased as certain events were played. As this War Status hit certain levels, new cards were shuffled into your deck. Your deck became larger as the game continued. But you also thinned your deck whenever possible, and chose carefully what to play as events and what to play as Ops. So, in the end, the most effective deck was the thin one where all weak cards had been culled and only a series of strong cards that you kept re-drawing remained. That sounds awfully similar to deck-building to me.
I'm not sure that this deck management system has ever been surpassed. Heck, I would say it hasn't even been matched. People have tried and tried, but the fine balance of what each deck and sub-deck should have, along with the relative importance of each event, has been something of a nightmare, it seems. It has led to some interesting games, but many of them seem to have flaws that, for whatever reason, Paths of Glory has avoided.
After Paths of Glory, there was very little innovation. The most remarkable was the "split ops" system that Napoleonic Wars employed and which grew into the system used by the very successful Here I Stand. But very little has been done in regards to deck management. Twilight Struggle has an interesting shared deck system where there are sub-decks and where, when you receive your opponent's events, you use the Ops and your opponent gets the event. This leads to an interesting management strategy where you play your own events for Ops so that they will, at some point, end up in your opponent's hand where he will be forced to allow you to play your own event.
It should also be noted that, as far as deck management goes, The Hammer of the Scots system of Columbia Games actually takes it a step backwards. In their system, you have a small (25 card) shared deck with 5 or so events. Also, in this system, each card represents an operations value OR an event, not both. It goes back to the We The People system in many ways but leaves us even more in the throws of randomness where I could have, turn after turn, a fist full of events or a fist full of 1's, while my opponent in moving his armies all over the board. The game works, and works well, but it is in spite of its overly simplistic deck management system.
But I digress...
For me, the next interesting refinement in deck management in wargames is Martin Wallace's A Few Acres of Snow. I won't debate whether it is a wargame or not; I certainly enjoy it and find the conflict satisfying, which is enough for me. What I really find interesting, though, is the system of deck management that the game uses. Wallace's design really doesn't trace a direct lineage with the CDG system that Herman developed. It draws its inspiration and lineage from eurogame mechanics, in particular the "deck-building" mechanism used in a game like Dominion.
Wallace has each player start with a minimal deck. Every turn, each player has two actions, which may use some, all, or none of the cards in his hand. The player then replenishes the deck up to his hand of five. The cards in this very small deck appear again and again, but they are limited in possibility and in power.
But each player has two larger decks which can be added, piece by piece, into his personal playing deck. We are already beyond We the People at this point in that each player has his own two decks to draw from (along with a very small shared deck). Add to this the characteristics of the two decks that each player has. Each player has an "empire" deck, where such imperial resources as military units, native american recruits, and even a governor can be brought into your playing deck. As an action, you simply add one of these cards to your deck (sometimes paying a cost in gold).
The second deck is a deck of locations. As you build a settlement in a location, you gain that card's location card. Most cards will allow you the possibility of exploring a few new locations. Many times, these location cards will give you more resources. Sometimes, it may be a "bateau" symbol allowing you to populate further down the map's rivers. Sometimes, it may be a ship, giving you a number of possibilities including piracy. Sometimes, it might be a military unit. Many locations give you multiple options of how to use it in a particular turn.
Sometimes, the location card may not be useful at all.
Two interesting advancements are presented here. The first is the idea of choice. You are choosing, through settlement of a location or simply purchasing an empire card, what you are adding to your deck. Each choice defines your power, rather than having your power defined by the dictated next deck in line. Broadly speaking, each card you choose pushes you down a path of being an offensive military power, a Native American-allied raider, or an explorer and settler. You decide which military units you add to your deck, defensive units such as fortresses and militia or offensive units such as infantry.
And every choice you make causes your deck to become thicker. This is the second advancement. As your empire grows, if you're not careful, it will become bloated. You may end up having to add useless cards because the location had some other use for you (like a spot from which to launch raids). But while the location is useful, the card may becomes dross in your deck and hand. It models very nicely the effect of having a bloated, growing empire actually limit its own power through its inability to streamline operations. It also models nicely the escalation of war where, with enough escalation, your decisions become dictated by the resources that you have made available. You get into conflicts and situations that you cannot get out of because of the way that your empire expanded.
With these deck-building mechanics, A Few Acres of Snow represents the next logical step in the evolution of card driven wargames. The cards give the players the difficult choices we all crave. They also model very nicely the escalation of responsibility that comes along with an escalation of power. The idea of "a clean deck," discussed so often in Paths of Glory, is a key function in A Few Acres of Snow. Every card you add to your deck causes you to have to think about its thickness. More cards (the Governor or the Trader, for instance) will be added to your deck in order to streamline it. And, of course, each choice you make to streamline your deck involves taking an action in order to do so.
I cannot wait to see how else the deck-building idea can be incorporated into wargames. It means choice in how you build your power base and it means there is no one, in the end, to blame but yourself when your power structure becomes bloated and inefficient. A year ago, I could have written this blog entry and declared the Card Driven Wargame dead. Today, Martin Wallace and A Few Acres of Snow (with a nod to Dominion) have breathed new life and new possibilities into it.
Thursday, January 5, 2012
My Family and Bergman's Seventh Seal
I think I'm dumb...
or maybe just happy...
-Nirvana
Well, I said this wouldn't be solely about games, so let me start off with movies...
Over the holidays, I had the opportunity to re-watch one of my favorite old foreign films, The Seventh Seal, by Ingmar Bergman. The circumstances were, as is usual in my life, interesting. It was approximately 10:30pm on my son's eleventh birthday, my parents and my in-laws were over to celebrate, and my son was downstairs enjoying those first few hours of being officially eleven by playing his newly acquired game, Skylanders.
My sister-in-law, a film buff of sorts, was lobbying to watch The Seventh Seal with her daughters. Their birthday present to her was to allow her to pick three movies that they would watch together, no complaints. She had decided to explore how far this could be pushed by watching Bergman's film, black and white and in Swedish, along with a french film, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. I'm not sure what the third movie ended up being, but I like to think it was equally painful to the 21st century adolescent mind.
I mentioned that I owned a copy of The Seventh Seal on DVD. It is actually one of my favorite films and I used to show it to my students in a World Literature class. (A side note here - The millennials do NOT like black and white, and they do NOT seem to like subtitles. I usually had to talk them through a great deal of the movie, explaining this, asking that, and that skill served me well in our little family viewing session).
A surprising groundswell began that culminated in my going to the basement to The Vault (actually a tupperware that contains my DVD's-for-school collection). The crowd thinned out a bit, with siblings-in-law and cousins deciding that the transition from birthday cake to Bergman was a bit much. When the film began, Bergman's 21st century audience turned out to be my two older children (a sixteen year old daughter and a fourteen year old son), my parents, my in-laws, my sister-in-law, her two daughters, my very tolerant wife, and I. Quite a diverse crew: three generations with tastes that ranged from The Umbrellas at Cherbourg to Toddlers in Tiaras.
From about 10:30 until about 12:30, I had one of those surreal experiences that can only be blogged about. My daughter almost immiediately fell asleep. In her defense, her favorite element of television dialogue seems to be the "bleep" sound that goes along with expletives. I swear sometimes it sounds like her shows are broadcast in Morse code. She said afterward that she "heard them talk about horses eating each other and that was it." The dialogue in question was in the first ten minutes or so of the movie. Oh well, she's young. Lots of time left for culture.
My parents watched dutifully and discussed symbolism. Half of me was proud. The other half realized what had made me an English teacher. Thanks, mom and dad.
My sister in law noted the humor (in some interesting places - more on that in a moment). And my in-laws slept some and watched most and, in the end, seemed to enjoy the experience.
What was my impression? I have seen the movie in the neighborhood of ten times. I have shown and talked generations of high schoolers through it. And, every time, I am struck by how profound and beautiful it is.
Let me start off by addressing the humor. There is definite humor in the film. Plog the Smith is at least funny. And Jons the Squire, while dark and cynical, definitely has his moments, my favorite being his narration of the conversation between Plog and his promiscuous wife, predicting the lines of each as the wife slowly seduces Plog back to her arms. But that's it for me. I find, contrary to my sister-in-law's interpretations, the rest of the movie a sobering exploration of the meaning of life in the face of the inevitiability of death.
For me, the movie is about the existential questioning of Antonius Block. Block left ten years before the action of the film to reclaim the Holy Lands in one of the crusades. He has fought for God and has returned disillusioned. And his return is to a land ravaged by the Black Death (a strange Black Death where people die sitting against a rock, tending to their livestock in a barn, or even overacting in a forest - but I think I have to give Bergman some artistic license here). Twice in the film he tries to pray and finds he cannot. He constantly looks for consolation and proof of God's existence. He asks Death about what answers he holds (Death claims to have none). He asks a girl about to be burned at the stake for "consorting with the Devil" if she can direct him to said Devil so that he can ask him about God. He wants the answers. He wants something more than faith. And, in the end, he is given nothing.
The central image of the film is Block's extended game of chess against the physical embodiment of Death. Block claims to play chess with Death in order to have time for one significant action. And in the final moves of the game, Block claims that the small amount of time he bought with his skill at chess was worth it. Death asks him what he has gained, and Block's response is, "that's my affair."
So, what did he do in that time?
The most significant thing he did was to save a simple family of actors. As my father pointed out, they may correlate to the Holy Family. The man's name is Joph (Joesph) and the woman's is Mia (Mary).They even have their own holy child (okay, Michael is his name - the correlation is not perfect). Joph has visions, but is known to exaggerate them (Mia mentions that he claimed that he had seen the devil paint their wagon's wheels red, but that she then discovered red paint under his fingernails). Mia takes care of the child, is loyal and loving to her husband, and, in one scene, is generous to the stranger Block, his squire, and a plague survivor that Block and he have picked up along the way.
In this key scene, we see what is important in life. Not crusades, not riches, not pride. Block is struck by the simplicity of the companionship of this couple and the simple, sweet meal of wild strawberries and fresh milk. He says that he will carry the memory with him always, and that "it will be sign," a specific and - forgive the pun - significant line that lends a sacredness to the scene. This is worth saving, and Block, who knows that his dark experiences have closed the capacity for this experience off from him at some level (when he sees his wife again after ten years, for instance, they have a strained exchange where they each admit how much the other has changed), saves the holy family by knocking the pieces off the chessboard and leaving Death, who is about to win, to replace them in their proper places. This brief interruption allows the family to escape, where all the rest who travel with Block die in film's final scenes.
So, what has Block gained? What has he saved by saving this family? First, he saves faith. This doesn't have to be a Christian faith, per se, and it's not a faith that Block can share. It is the simple faith of the child, along with the generous faith in other people that Mia and Joph both possess. Mia does not feel threatened by this dark, brooding knight or his cynical squire. Joph has faith in others as exhibited in the naivete that almost gets him killed in a local inn. Joph is also allowed that Christian faith. Of course, the paradox is that it is easy to have faith when you have visions. Or maybe Joph's faith allows him to have these visions? Any way, the film leaves us with the impression that Joph, for all his faults, is worth saving. (Another interesting side note - Block sees Death. He's the only one other than Joph who does see him. So, for some reason, supernatural occurrences are not enough to give Block faith. I guess he knows Death exists and is willing to accept his embodiment, but the idea of a soul or supernatural beings who struggle for them is too much for him?)
Block also saves youth and love. The young couple, with their child, love each other very much. They laugh and play with Michael. Joph composes songs for his wife and sings them. She, in turn, holds and caresses him. And she is concerned and protective of him when he returns from being bullied.
I like the movie for its significance to the history of film and for its existential explorations of the meaning of life. But I love the film for the conclusions that it reaches. Faith and love. I can see that. I am at my happiest with those that I love, my children, my wife, and my family. And, while I am no visionary like Joph, I try to maintain the faith of Mia, a simple faith in the good nature of others and a simple optimism that the stormy night will bring the dawn (which occurs literally in the film). Let's face it; the problems of the world are dark and complex and seemingly unsolvable. But the way we cope with this is to believe in each other, see the good there, and, like Antonius Block, carry each other and those simple, happy moments with us. You know, the viewing was surreal. I alternated between teaching people about how I teach the film and learning from what others said about Bergman and his symbolism. But, when all is said and done, I think it will be one of those moments I carry with me.
or maybe just happy...
-Nirvana
Well, I said this wouldn't be solely about games, so let me start off with movies...
Over the holidays, I had the opportunity to re-watch one of my favorite old foreign films, The Seventh Seal, by Ingmar Bergman. The circumstances were, as is usual in my life, interesting. It was approximately 10:30pm on my son's eleventh birthday, my parents and my in-laws were over to celebrate, and my son was downstairs enjoying those first few hours of being officially eleven by playing his newly acquired game, Skylanders.
My sister-in-law, a film buff of sorts, was lobbying to watch The Seventh Seal with her daughters. Their birthday present to her was to allow her to pick three movies that they would watch together, no complaints. She had decided to explore how far this could be pushed by watching Bergman's film, black and white and in Swedish, along with a french film, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. I'm not sure what the third movie ended up being, but I like to think it was equally painful to the 21st century adolescent mind.
I mentioned that I owned a copy of The Seventh Seal on DVD. It is actually one of my favorite films and I used to show it to my students in a World Literature class. (A side note here - The millennials do NOT like black and white, and they do NOT seem to like subtitles. I usually had to talk them through a great deal of the movie, explaining this, asking that, and that skill served me well in our little family viewing session).
A surprising groundswell began that culminated in my going to the basement to The Vault (actually a tupperware that contains my DVD's-for-school collection). The crowd thinned out a bit, with siblings-in-law and cousins deciding that the transition from birthday cake to Bergman was a bit much. When the film began, Bergman's 21st century audience turned out to be my two older children (a sixteen year old daughter and a fourteen year old son), my parents, my in-laws, my sister-in-law, her two daughters, my very tolerant wife, and I. Quite a diverse crew: three generations with tastes that ranged from The Umbrellas at Cherbourg to Toddlers in Tiaras.
From about 10:30 until about 12:30, I had one of those surreal experiences that can only be blogged about. My daughter almost immiediately fell asleep. In her defense, her favorite element of television dialogue seems to be the "bleep" sound that goes along with expletives. I swear sometimes it sounds like her shows are broadcast in Morse code. She said afterward that she "heard them talk about horses eating each other and that was it." The dialogue in question was in the first ten minutes or so of the movie. Oh well, she's young. Lots of time left for culture.
My parents watched dutifully and discussed symbolism. Half of me was proud. The other half realized what had made me an English teacher. Thanks, mom and dad.
My sister in law noted the humor (in some interesting places - more on that in a moment). And my in-laws slept some and watched most and, in the end, seemed to enjoy the experience.
What was my impression? I have seen the movie in the neighborhood of ten times. I have shown and talked generations of high schoolers through it. And, every time, I am struck by how profound and beautiful it is.
Let me start off by addressing the humor. There is definite humor in the film. Plog the Smith is at least funny. And Jons the Squire, while dark and cynical, definitely has his moments, my favorite being his narration of the conversation between Plog and his promiscuous wife, predicting the lines of each as the wife slowly seduces Plog back to her arms. But that's it for me. I find, contrary to my sister-in-law's interpretations, the rest of the movie a sobering exploration of the meaning of life in the face of the inevitiability of death.
For me, the movie is about the existential questioning of Antonius Block. Block left ten years before the action of the film to reclaim the Holy Lands in one of the crusades. He has fought for God and has returned disillusioned. And his return is to a land ravaged by the Black Death (a strange Black Death where people die sitting against a rock, tending to their livestock in a barn, or even overacting in a forest - but I think I have to give Bergman some artistic license here). Twice in the film he tries to pray and finds he cannot. He constantly looks for consolation and proof of God's existence. He asks Death about what answers he holds (Death claims to have none). He asks a girl about to be burned at the stake for "consorting with the Devil" if she can direct him to said Devil so that he can ask him about God. He wants the answers. He wants something more than faith. And, in the end, he is given nothing.
The central image of the film is Block's extended game of chess against the physical embodiment of Death. Block claims to play chess with Death in order to have time for one significant action. And in the final moves of the game, Block claims that the small amount of time he bought with his skill at chess was worth it. Death asks him what he has gained, and Block's response is, "that's my affair."
So, what did he do in that time?
The most significant thing he did was to save a simple family of actors. As my father pointed out, they may correlate to the Holy Family. The man's name is Joph (Joesph) and the woman's is Mia (Mary).They even have their own holy child (okay, Michael is his name - the correlation is not perfect). Joph has visions, but is known to exaggerate them (Mia mentions that he claimed that he had seen the devil paint their wagon's wheels red, but that she then discovered red paint under his fingernails). Mia takes care of the child, is loyal and loving to her husband, and, in one scene, is generous to the stranger Block, his squire, and a plague survivor that Block and he have picked up along the way.
In this key scene, we see what is important in life. Not crusades, not riches, not pride. Block is struck by the simplicity of the companionship of this couple and the simple, sweet meal of wild strawberries and fresh milk. He says that he will carry the memory with him always, and that "it will be sign," a specific and - forgive the pun - significant line that lends a sacredness to the scene. This is worth saving, and Block, who knows that his dark experiences have closed the capacity for this experience off from him at some level (when he sees his wife again after ten years, for instance, they have a strained exchange where they each admit how much the other has changed), saves the holy family by knocking the pieces off the chessboard and leaving Death, who is about to win, to replace them in their proper places. This brief interruption allows the family to escape, where all the rest who travel with Block die in film's final scenes.
So, what has Block gained? What has he saved by saving this family? First, he saves faith. This doesn't have to be a Christian faith, per se, and it's not a faith that Block can share. It is the simple faith of the child, along with the generous faith in other people that Mia and Joph both possess. Mia does not feel threatened by this dark, brooding knight or his cynical squire. Joph has faith in others as exhibited in the naivete that almost gets him killed in a local inn. Joph is also allowed that Christian faith. Of course, the paradox is that it is easy to have faith when you have visions. Or maybe Joph's faith allows him to have these visions? Any way, the film leaves us with the impression that Joph, for all his faults, is worth saving. (Another interesting side note - Block sees Death. He's the only one other than Joph who does see him. So, for some reason, supernatural occurrences are not enough to give Block faith. I guess he knows Death exists and is willing to accept his embodiment, but the idea of a soul or supernatural beings who struggle for them is too much for him?)
Block also saves youth and love. The young couple, with their child, love each other very much. They laugh and play with Michael. Joph composes songs for his wife and sings them. She, in turn, holds and caresses him. And she is concerned and protective of him when he returns from being bullied.
I like the movie for its significance to the history of film and for its existential explorations of the meaning of life. But I love the film for the conclusions that it reaches. Faith and love. I can see that. I am at my happiest with those that I love, my children, my wife, and my family. And, while I am no visionary like Joph, I try to maintain the faith of Mia, a simple faith in the good nature of others and a simple optimism that the stormy night will bring the dawn (which occurs literally in the film). Let's face it; the problems of the world are dark and complex and seemingly unsolvable. But the way we cope with this is to believe in each other, see the good there, and, like Antonius Block, carry each other and those simple, happy moments with us. You know, the viewing was surreal. I alternated between teaching people about how I teach the film and learning from what others said about Bergman and his symbolism. But, when all is said and done, I think it will be one of those moments I carry with me.
Sunday, January 1, 2012
A New Way to Express Myself
It is with mixed emotions that I start this blog. It means a transition for my podcast, Point 2 Point. From this point forward, P2P will be periodic news and commentary. This will be where I open up and talk about the things I love.
So -- why this transition? A few reasons:
1. P2P had run its course for me. I have said most of what I felt I needed to say. I would have liked to have performed some more interviews, but the coordination of people's schedules (especially mine) and the technological triangulation required for an interview really has become trying.
2. Is Point 2 Point really Point 2 Point without Scott? The short answer is no. I think I did a good job carrying the show through 2011 solo, but it really wasn't the same. Scott came over for our "Micropseudocon 2011," and it was great. He talked trash. He laughed at me (and with me). He won a game or two. He criticized a game and called it "unplayable" (in this case, Middle Earth Quest). He was, in short, everything that made me choose him as a co-host all those years ago. The banter was more fun to record and more fun to participate in than sitting and trying to keep some kind of solo, artificial "dialogue"going. So, I tried, but there really is no Point 2 Point without Scott.
3. I want to talk about things other than games. I love a number of things in my life, and I like to talk about them. And Point 2 Point was about wargames. Period. As it should have been. Here, people can read my thoughts, comment on them and respond to them (hopefully), and ignore the things that don't interest them. And I can express my views on all of the topics that interest me: wargames, science fiction and fantasy, teaching, writing, games other than wargames, role-playing, game design, the English Premier League team Arsenal, and the Virginia Tech Hokies, among other things. So, read what interests you (and, hopefully, a bit more), comment on it, and ignore the rest.
So, what will this blog be? It will be all of the above and more. It will not, at this point, be regular, but I foresee being able to write more than I was able to record (three kids, two of them teenagers -- need I say more?).
So -- why this transition? A few reasons:
1. P2P had run its course for me. I have said most of what I felt I needed to say. I would have liked to have performed some more interviews, but the coordination of people's schedules (especially mine) and the technological triangulation required for an interview really has become trying.
2. Is Point 2 Point really Point 2 Point without Scott? The short answer is no. I think I did a good job carrying the show through 2011 solo, but it really wasn't the same. Scott came over for our "Micropseudocon 2011," and it was great. He talked trash. He laughed at me (and with me). He won a game or two. He criticized a game and called it "unplayable" (in this case, Middle Earth Quest). He was, in short, everything that made me choose him as a co-host all those years ago. The banter was more fun to record and more fun to participate in than sitting and trying to keep some kind of solo, artificial "dialogue"going. So, I tried, but there really is no Point 2 Point without Scott.
3. I want to talk about things other than games. I love a number of things in my life, and I like to talk about them. And Point 2 Point was about wargames. Period. As it should have been. Here, people can read my thoughts, comment on them and respond to them (hopefully), and ignore the things that don't interest them. And I can express my views on all of the topics that interest me: wargames, science fiction and fantasy, teaching, writing, games other than wargames, role-playing, game design, the English Premier League team Arsenal, and the Virginia Tech Hokies, among other things. So, read what interests you (and, hopefully, a bit more), comment on it, and ignore the rest.
So, what will this blog be? It will be all of the above and more. It will not, at this point, be regular, but I foresee being able to write more than I was able to record (three kids, two of them teenagers -- need I say more?).
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