Kickstart Your Weekend: Mighty Morphin' Weekend!

Kickstart Your Weekend: A series in which I occasionally spotlight Kickstarter projects that are ending soon and deserve a little nerd love. Also, I'll highlight some past projects as well, as you never know when these enterprises are going to turn up again.

Another busy week for Kickstarter nerds. While I said from the start that Kickstart Your Weekend wouldn't be a weekly feature, it sure is shaping up that way. This week we've got updates on past projects and a new set of highlights. Next week I anticipate doing a highlights selection of past projects, and after that it looks like there may be a lull in truly exciting Kickstarter projects, though you never know when a new campaign might pop up. Kind of like pseudo-nazi societies in science-fiction, they turn up whenever things get stale. And, if you're lucky, they're worth the effort to vanquish them rather than becoming just another clumsy cash-in for some bland action scenes and ham-fisted morality tale (I'm looking at you, Stargate SG-1's Eurondans).

Sorry about that, back to Kickstarter stuff...

Jagged Alliance: Flashback--which I was most worried about over the past week--finished its campaign well, just squeaking by to collect its first stretch goal. I'd waited on this one until the last minute, but in the end the promise of Mac support plus the fun skin packs they were previewing helped secure my moneys. They also have a slacker backer program in the works at their main site, which will give users the chance to belatedly pre-order now that the Kickstarter campaign is finished.The steampunk air skirmisher Guns of Icarus: Adventure Mode funded at just over two hundred grand with outside supporters included, punting their MMO dreams a little further down the development gridiron. You can keep following their puffs of white steam and black smoke over at the Guns of Icarus site. Robotech RPG Tactics blew through stretch goal after stretch goal to claim a massive 1.442 million dollars, making it one of the most successful projects in the board game category on Kickstarter. Anime mecha fans should pop on over to Palladium Books to check out their RPG products and watch for the release of Robotech RPG Tactics in early 2014.

Bear: A First Time Parent's Continuing Journey is doing solidly well and is on track to get funded in twelve days.  Browncoats: Independence War just achieved full funding with 3 days to go, so I'd say they'll hit a stretch goal or two. And keep in mind that unless you back and get a download or DVD of the movie, it probably won't be available to see outside of con and special event screenings. So something to ponder, that. Finally, Deadzone is over $500,000 pledged with 9 days left, meaning it is almost guaranteed to be Mantic Games' most successful KS campaign yet. Seriously, don't forget about them and their enkindled Chovar model.

So with the past campaigns' roundups out of the way, I've got another set of three projects for you, this time featuring a second edition for a successful RPG, a superhero board/miniatures game mash-up, and a dark revival of a Saturday morning dynasty as a web series. Woot woot.

OVA: The Anime Role-playing Game

The art looks beautiful and perfectly evokes classic anime tropes.

What it is: OVA is an RPG tailored and streamlined to put players in anime-style adventures quickly and with a minimum of effort. Written by Clay Gardner, OVA (Open Versatile Anime) was originally published in 2005 and though it was a very small release, the unique and straightforward approach to the genre was fairly well-received. Eight years later, a wiser and more seasoned Clay Gardner is returning to his first effort with an eye to refine and deepen the rules and throw a hefty amount of artist glamour over the whole effort. The most interesting aspect of the game is the elegantly simple character creation process, which is supposed to take only a matter of minutes if you want. You design only the remarkable aspects of your character--there are no specified stats, no core abilities you need to define whether or not they're important to the character concept. If they're very good or very bad at something, that is what defines them, and that is what shows up on the character sheet. It's a novel approach and perfectly fits the anime genre, where mundane activities and attributes are hand-waved as a matter of course.

Why it's exciting: I'm a fan of GURPS, a point I've belabored on this blog several times already. But I have also said just as often that I'm a sucker for great art and for eccentric game mechanics. And OVA has both in spades. Mr. Gardner has also put up a couple of character books on his campaign's main page. I love character books--they're a combination of character background, detailed character sheet and illustration, and a summary of the core rules that apply to playing that character. It's a great play aid for learning the system, looks terribly attractive, and is useful for convention purposes for getting players into the game quickly. They're already fully funded and past a long list of stretch goals that include a mobile app to support the game. So OVA has definitely secured my pledge. And, as I said in my GM Tips post last week, a well-constructed system with a narrow focus trumps the best generic system in its realm of specialization, and OVA has me really excited to play some bright frenetic anime action. And, due to come out by the end of the year, I hopefully won't have to wait long.



Guardians Chronicles

What it is: Guardians Chronicles is an ambitious board game coming from Iello Games. In it, players take up dice, cards, miniatures, and play heroes assaulting the lair of the mastermind Professor Skarov. One player takes control of the villain and his base full of henchmen, trying to hold off the heroes while they vie to foil each other and score the most headlines by the game's end. The characters are all original heroes inspired by classic heroic paragons and villainous archetypes. And by that I mean they're totally defensible and creative designs that are obviously inspired by Dr. Strange, Captain America, Iron Man, and so forth. The play mechanics involve each hero wielding a small hand of cards to upgrade their hero with abilities and stat boosts on a turn-by-turn basis, battling robots, ninjas, and supervillains on their way.

Why it's exciting: Iello Games has already produced some very well-received, albeit more shallow, board games in the past. King of Tokyo in particular got a lot of great reviews over the past year. Guardians Chronicles looks like a colorful super-powered riff on the asymmetrical gameplay of Descent, with up to four players ganging up on a powerful mastermind controlling multiple characters of lesser ability. I love the artwork, and now that the game is fully funded with 24 days to go, I bet we'll see all or most of the stretch goals they've laid out funded before the end, which will unlock a dozen heroes and villains and bonus henchman for the larger pledges. I haven't pledged to them yet myself, but the colorful characters and action-packed game mechanics have me tempted.



MMPR

What it is: When you consider all the iterations as one, the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers has been one of the longest running shows for kids. And that goes back to my generation, with the show premiering on Fox Kids in 1993. Twenty years later, the Power Rangers are still doing their thing. Still appealing to the same age demographic with the same pratfalls, bad comedy, and cheesy but kinetic action sequences. We all grew up, but the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers didn't. That's where MMPR comes in. A fan tribute web series, MMPR aims to bring our Saturday morning fondest memories into a contemporary light with a post-apocalyptic, more serious tone. Their campaign aims to fund the fan-series pilot episode to the series, plus any further episodes they might get via stretch goals.

Why it's exciting: Honestly, I want to see some of the action for this show before I get too excited, but that little teaser and the synopsis has got me perked up. A post-heroic, blasted setting that is somehow the result of evil being defeated in the past also strikes me as an interesting and unexpected angle to take. And I was always a dork for the Green Ranger, which means I'm fairly hooked by the plot conceit of a new generation of Rangers looking for Tommy, who's now in hiding. If MMPR can just give me a little bit of that old spark I used to feel when I'd watch the Green Dragon Zord rise up out of the water without making me feel like a dork? I'd get on board. Heck, who am I kidding--I've watched old episodes of Fraggle Rock on my own in the past few years--I'm not afraid of feeling like a dork.

Fire and Ice Roundup: 2012 and 2013

Today I put to rest another post that's been lingering for far too long. Last year, just after going to Fire and Ice 2012, I pledged to give a more detailed discussion of the convention... later that week.

Well, frak. That sure as heck didn't happen.

So now, having been haunted by that particular failure for over a year, I've added another victim to my unfinished business: Fire and Ice 2013. This actually works out pretty well, as in 2013 much of my time at the con revolved around the games that I'd volunteered to host. Since I didn't do this the first year, it makes for a good comprehensive perspective of the small gaming convention.

This review I'll break up into the types of games I've played at Fire and Ice, and a brief run-down of my specific experiences.

Role-Playing Games

I've mentioned in the past that I love being able to play several RPGs in one weekend. It's a great way to try out different game systems and with players of diverse role-playing styles. This second part is really fun and unique. You can always play a new game with your same old gaming group, but forming a whole new group of role-players is slow at best and at worst it's more agonizing than the first season of Star Trek Next Generation. Of course, playing with new people presents its own difficulties, too. You need to spend a lot of game time feeling out the others' play styles and expectations of the game, and it's easy to fall back more on humor than you would otherwise do in a typical session.

"Well, frak. That sure as heck didn't happen."

What first brought me to Fire and Ice 2012 was a conversation with Kurt Wilken on the GURPS forums at Steve Jackson Games' website about running a one-shot GURPS Thundercats game for a local convention. My enthusiasm for both GURPS and the Thundercats led me to bring my wife and son to the small Wisconsin convention in search of games, and Kurt's GURPS Thundercats happened to be in the first slot for that Friday, too, making for an easy integration into the event. His game was GURPS lite, which is pretty essential for a con (remember my intro to GURPS), and he had a lot of fun with the cartoon characters that made it enjoyable. So much so that the next day I had to join his GURPS Justice League game as well, which was probably even more fun despite my distaste for the DC Universe--and it was probably helped by the fact that the Justice League game had five players who were a bit more into the game than the two others who sat in on the Thundercats game. The one minor note of disappointment, however, is that I was looking forward to seeing how another GM tackles the complexity of GURPS, since I've never played the system as PC before. Much to my chagrin, Kurt's style was largely the same as mine--thanks a lot! That teaches me sooo much.

The past two Fire and Ice cons also gave me a chance to try a number of new RPGs, too. Last year I'd also played a game of Deadlands, which felt to me like a compromise between the Serenity Cortex system and D&D. The setting is fantasy-steampunk-western, where Jules Vernian devices can be used by divinely-blessed gunslingers to fight off Apache werewolves. Yeah, it's that crazy. And I don't think a stranger has ever made me laugh harder in my life. The Deadlands game was played during the last slot of the night, and as such we got pretty crazy flogging our characters through the climax of our zombie-infested vampire ghost town. Literally, in the case of one of our players, who played an older preacher who could literally call down brimstone from on high. In order to bring his six-barrelled shotgun to the enemy, he had to whip his mule-spirited horse into a frenzy that was punctuated by hoarse-drawled homiles screeched in a perfectly evocative and ridiculous pitch. The game itself wasn't  interesting enough for me to seek it out, and the setting felt like a cliche pot-pouri, but it was magic hour with our improbable crew that night.

"You can always play a new game with your same old gaming group, but forming a whole new group of role-players is slow at best and at worst it's more agonizing than the first season of Star Trek Next Generation."

One of my favorite games from last year was a session of Mistrunner, which remains the most capably run RPG I've played in anywhere. Mistrunner is actually a small independent RPG system and unique setting that was released this past year, and at Fire and Ice 2012 we were being led by the game's designer, Glenn Buettner. Set in a future, devastated version of Earth where magical races suddenly entered the world and destroyed everything familiar, this game avoided the traps of a typical fantasy RPG. There were no humans, and the limited amounts of steam and old tech meant that it had a little more refinement than a medieval RPG without the unrestrained insanity of the Deadlands game. The game system itself was interesting and easy enough to get a handle on, but the pre-made PCs were so well done it's hard to tell how much control players have over character creation. Pretty much all of the game's characters were magic users and/or casters, which is not something I like, but that worked in this system. Magic in the game basically revolved around tapping into pools of magical influence over your specific element--fire or water, etc. You watched Captain Planet, right? Except in here Mr. Buettner really rewarded creativity, and our magical improvisation was key to resolving the different fights. I opted to play a troll mistrunner--the Ma-Ti of these Planeteers. I know--I got stuck with heart? When I don't even like being a magic user? Well, this particular troll was awesome. As a mistrunner, I was the guide for our group through the magical fog that dominates the setting, and I had physical control over it as well as an astral ability to tap into the mist realms connected. Or something. I just loved that Mr. Buettner gave us a chance to buy gear in the beginning of the session and let my troll pick up a perfume  bottle with an atomizer, which I used to materialize steps in the air, projected like shotgun blasts, and used to detonate a giant spider's head from the inside out. It's just too bad that we weren't supposed to kill that spider--but that's the kind of crap that goes down when a troll is calling the shots, dog.

This past year, at Fire and Ice 2013, the only RPG I played was a game called Microscope, which is a super quirky anti-RPG. You don't assume the roles of characters, there's no dice-rolling or stats, and there's no one GM. Instead, armed with note cards, pencils, and in an exercise that reminded me of my fondest memories of theater at school, you take turns fleshing out a timeline. It's very much a high concept game that is designed to help brainstorm settings and chain of events for proper RPGs, but if you're like me and too anal to consider giving up your GM reins to let the players collectively create your setting, it might just be a fun novelty instead.

Board Games

The board game scene at Fire and Ice is great. There are tons of tables devoted to games of all types, and if not there's a big library of games that they loan out to people looking to try out something specific that isn't part of a scheduled event. They even have little "looking for players" signs that you can set up on a table beside your game to let people know that you don't have any friends want to beat some new people have available seats. At Fire and Ice 2013, I dropped in on a pickup game of Axis & Allies (where I led the Soviet forces to resounding victory and much mocking of the high schooler commanders of the Axis powers), and I used a sign to get a five player game of Marvel Legendary started--which was frakkin' sweet.

"...that's the kind of crap that goes down when a troll is calling the shots, dog."

And the con is a great place to play new board games. There's no better way to learn a board game than to simply sit down and play it under the direction of a player who loves the game. At Fire and Ice 2012 I played the massively popular game Eclipse when it was sold out in most of America, and that was a fun stretch for me. A Euro-style board game with its sights set on Twilight Imperium's throne, Eclipse put us in command of sci-fi human empires looking for a reason to sponge out our fellow players from amongst the stars. I liked the fleet customization aspect which let us change our ship's abilities as the game progressed, but I wasn't a fan of getting rolled over by a girl's dreadnought fleet of nuke-dom. I'll stick with my good old Twilight Imperium, but it was a might fun game to play.

Similarly, I'd never gotten to play a game of Memoir '44 Overlord before Fire and Ice 2012. I have Memoir '44, and recommended it in my Memorial Day post, but the Overlord variation of the game is epically prohibitive to set up spontaneously. You need two sets of the game, a lot of space, and exactly four people on both sides of the table--three players each commanding the left, right, and center sections of their side's forces, and one honcho calling the shots for all three. I got to play as the grand marshal of the German forces in our epic game, and I'm proud to say I got my Jerry subordinates butchered terribly. All in terrible fun.

Miniatures Games

For 2012, I played only two short miniatures games, even though a full third of the game floor was devoted to Heroclix, Warhammer, and Warhammer 40,000 tournaments. Not wanting to miss out on the clix action, but not yet into it myself, I played a fun small intro scenario of the out-of-print Mechwarrior Heroclix game, which was an intuitive but difficult-to-master variation on the core clix system that added a second clicker. For those of you who don't know, the clix system is basically a model on top of a decoder-ring type setup the size of a bottlecap with character stats on it. As your characters take damage, you click the decoder towards their death, and the stats change to reflect diminished abilities or building desperation. The Mechwarrior game was fun, and the appeal of getting into a fully fleshed out game appealed, but I just wasn't that into the figures and scale that I felt conflicted a bit with the system. But, by the time The Avengers came out three months later, I was totally primed to start collecting Marvel Heroclix. So boo-yah for guerrilla marketing.

"I wasn't a fan of getting rolled over by a girl's dreadnought fleet of nuke-dom."

For Fire and Ice 2013, I actually led three games of space fleet battles in the miniatures gaming section. Playing a personal variation on Colonial Battlefleet, I let players command the ships of the show Battlestar Galactica against each other in scenarios modeling the Battle of the Tylium Asteroid, the Attack on the Resurrection Ship, and the Rescue on New Caprica. I love Colonial Battlefleet and hope to talk more about it, but for me the highlight was busting out my painted models and impressing people with a really good looking game, even if the rules are virtually unknown.

Well, that's it for a very late addition to my blog. One more plodding step towards being up-to-date and ever-timely.

Psssh. Like that's ever going to happen.

Nerd Bread: Board Games

Nerd Bread: There are a lot of things that go into making a nerd. Nerd bread describes things that are absolutely necessary to qualify for the title. The corollary, nerd butter, deepens the nerd experience to something much more profound, much like butter does to bread.

Today I'm going to touch on a piece of Nerd Bread that is near and dear to my heart: board games. Board games are a huge part of the Nerdery's relatively amicable home. They're a weekly staple in our house, we play them regularly with friends, and it's one of those things that's a great way to spend an afternoon with family over the holidays. We have board games that work for one or two people, or games that we only pull out when we have five to eight savvy players with at least six hours to burn. Some of these games are quick, party-oriented affairs with equal parts chit-chat, joking, and gaming, and others are more strict shut-up-and-take-your-turn board games.

Board games are great.

But, if you're like a lot of people I know, you're about to give me the old eye-roll and make a comment about Monopoly, Risk, Scrabble, or Life.

"You still like board games?" is the common refrain.

Yeah, that's right. I play board games. And not even in a trendy or ironic way, without drinking involved. And board games are alive and well these days, despite the mass public perception otherwise. There are more companies, bigger games, expensive franchises represented by an international variety of board games than have ever existed before. That's why it's Nerd Bread. And to help give you an idea of why board games are Nerd Bread, here are the rules of board games:

The first rule is...you don't need to make a Fight Club reference every time you start a list of rules.

The second rule is that virtually everyone likes some kind of board game. When anti-nerds say they don't like board games, they almost always are thinking of the big ones--Monopoly, Risk, or Life. And, despite being successful and long-standing traditions in board gaming, they are terrible. Monopoly is a pointless, luck-grind that takes hours to play and only minutes to sap your energy worse than a double helping of Thanksgiving turkey. Risk is a geographic tug-of-war that constantly frustrates the concept of having the lead in the game with unbalanced mechanics that are designed to extend play time without adding depth, strategy, or fun. And Life is just a procedural, going-through-the-motions version of Candy Land for non-grown-ups. No, people who hate board games just hate the particular board games they were forced to play as a kid, and most of those games deserve the ill-will. But there are so many different games out there that anyone with an open mind and willingness to experiment should be able to find one that suits them.

"Some of these games are quick, party-oriented affairs with equal parts chit-chat, joking, and gaming, and others are more strict shut-up-and-take-your-turn board games."

The third rule of board games is that different board games fit different occasions. There is no one-size-fits-all board game, and sometimes the game you're most enthusiastic about is the least appropriate game for a particular setting. I love Twilight Imperium. It is absolute Nerd Butter, featuring complex rules, deep strategy and like six decks of cards with special rules and effects. It can be played by up to eight people if you're willing to blow most of a day on it and have a six-by-four-foot play area. In short, I never get to play Twilight Imperium, because it is tremendously prohibitive to ordinary schedules and get-togethers. And that's ok, because we have other games that are perfectly suited to impromptu play sessions, or for playing when our latest RPG session gets canceled, or when the kids are asleep and we just need to get our Marvel on quietly. Board game variety is a great investment.

Fourthly, board games are not about being over-competitive dorks. The hackneyed board gamer image is of a near-sighted nerd straining over whether his friend is allowed to move one square or two, and arguing about it shrilly over spilled Mountain Dew. This isn't necessarily true, although being competitive and rules-lawyering can have its place in board games, and I generally recommend you always keep soda on a different surface from your favorite board game. And no one--NO ONE--is allowed to try to open a can of soda one-handed while inside the game's splash zone. That is serious business. But board games themselves are all about having fun, and there are a lot of games that offer light-hearted competition or even a fully cooperative experience. Picking out a game with the right objective--whether it's fun cooperation or cut-throat strategy and humiliation--is all apart of the game night experience.

"No, people who hate board games just hate the particular board games they were forced to play as a kid, and most of those games deserve the ill-will."

Fifthly and finally, the recommended age system for board games is a mess. There is no standardized system for age recommendations for board games, so always treat them as fuzzy, beer-goggled impressions of whether they'd make a good date. Some companies seem to pick their age recommendation as the age at which a person could read, internalize, and comprehend the rules. That's a good rule of thumb if a kid is wanting to pick up and play the game, but most of the time younger kids are going to pick up a game at the table and therefore be relying on a friend's or parent's understanding of the rules and ability to explain them. Poorly written rules can seem to inflate the age recommendation for a game that could otherwise be more friendly for casual players. Games with violent or suggestive art might have age recommendations that have nothing to do with the accessibility of the game's mechanics. When it comes down to it, nothing beats having a sit-down with the game and its components to evaluate if it'll be a fit for you. Second to that option, pull a nerd out of line at your local store and ask him to explain it to you quickly. Labels are a poor substitute to the impressions of players and how excited they do or don't get over the experience of playing that specific board game.

So those are the essential elements for understanding board games as a keystone of being a nerd. In the future, I'll highlight some of my favorite board games with full Nerdview reviews complete with odor, beef, gravy, and cheese. Until then, keep gaming.

Hype Alert: 2013 the Year of the Browncoat?

Alright, so that's a stupid name--sounds like an embarrassing continence problem. But for Browncoats--those are fans of the tv series Firefly and the movie sequel Serenity, keep up--this could be a simply awesome year. Or it might stink. Which would be just like any other year for a fan of Whedon's best work-that-isn't-The Avengers.

Firefly: the Role-Playing Game

First on the list of things to be excited about is a throwback to an old favorite of mine. Margaret Weis Productions is once more flyin' back to the 'verse and giving us a new role-playing game based on the television series this time around. MWP had made the original Serenity RPG which was based on the film, and as you probably recall from my personal RPG history, that was the first game where I really dove into being a full-time GM. I have a lot of nostalgia for that system and its cinematic quirkiness--especially coupled with the gritty house-ruled mechanics I tried to shove down its throat. ("You will have a fully-realized orbit-based map of the 'verse, and you will like it!") There were some parts of the system that were rough around the edges, admittedly. The Serenity RPG was actually the proto-form for MWP's Cortex system, and nowadays all their games are based on the Cortex Plus system, which essentially takes the mechanics one step further away from familiar RPG stats and tropes into systems more directly tailored to mimic the values and actions of the shows. For instance, the well-reviewed-but-recently-defunct Marvel RPG by MWP only gave its characters three universal stats: Solo, Buddy, and Team. The rest of the games mechanics were built around unique skills and powers, meaning that a much larger portion of a character sheet was essentially unique than in most other systems. The Firefly RPG promises to be based on the Cortex Plus system, meaning that my old Serenity books will probably be about as useful as Jayne's hat in Nandi's ranch*. That makes me a little sad, but that's the way of RPGs that aren't GURPS, I guess.

How it might suck: I really don't think that the game itself will be bad. Even though the Serenity RPG had a few bits sticking out that should've been edited, reviewed, or playtested out more, it was a solid set of mechanics that really delivered what it needed to, and failed to flesh out only a few interesting side bits that I was more than happy to house-rule. But what might suck about it is the fact that MWP is a small publisher and they seem to get bigger ambitions than they can deliver at times. For instance, they had originally planned on at least two more major expansions to their Battlestar Galactica RPG, based on a revised Serenity system, and those never came to fruition before their license expired, leaving only the core book and a handful of small pdf freebies online. More recently, MWP lost the Marvel RPG line quite abruptly, giving fans less than a month's notice to try to snatch up their books before they got pulled. And that series had actually started taking pre-orders for another future expansion that would never come. Now, in Marvel's case I'm sure that the issue became that the small publisher couldn't afford the license fees a post-Avengers Marvel demanded, but it still makes me a little afraid of loving this game when it comes. Longevity is the best friend of an RPG, and I'm going in expecting the Firefly RPG to have official support for a maybe year.



Firefly: the Board Game

Twentieth Century Fox must really be low-balling the franchise rights (and they should since they hated the original series so much, right?), because yet another company is getting even more sweeping franchise rights from the network. This time it's Gale Force 9, perhaps best known for making game aids for Dungeons & Dragons. Now, I'll tell you right now that I am a sucker for ship management as a concept. When I ran my friends through our Serenity campaign together, I really had a lot of fun making them agonize over purchases, picking up crew, and selecting jobs. Having a spiffy board of planets all laid out for me to whoosh my firefly-class transport over, also fun. Having fake money, crew cards, and what looks like upgrades to one's ship? Yesyes. In my personal gaming group, nearly every game we play consists largely of me shouting out threats like I'm coping (poorly) with Tourette syndrome and everyone contributing to a litany of whatever nerdy movie quotes we deem reasonably relevant to the current game. Since this is based on the 14 episode Firefly show, I can tell you that we can probably collectively manage at least  16 hours of quotes (extra time allotted to account for me correcting my friends' quotes). This is pretty much a mandatory buy. The only question is if it will be good enough for everyone else in my gaming group to buy their own copy after playing mine.

How it might suck: Oh, I really doubt it will be good enough. Granted, Gale Force 9's other board game, based on the show Spartacus, has received some generally positive reviews, there's just so much in this game that could go wrong. If it was being masterminded by board game veterans like Fantasy Flight Games or even Days of Wonder, I'd be a little less wary, but as it is I'm shifting in my seat when I think of all the ways this could go not smooth. And things never go smooth. The biggest thing is that all signs point to this game being a competitive upgrading game--between crew and ship components--where you can boost success for bigger heists with the right combination of upgrades. This sub-genre can be a bear to balance and keep interesting, and when a company new to board games has so much ambition both in terms of the scope of a game and the importance of the franchise...well, I start to feel like every dad on America's Funniest Videos ever. I protect my junk.

Protect your junk.



Firefly Fan Film "Browncoats: Independence War"

This is a neat project that just popped up on Kickstarter two days ago. It's an ambitious little fan film that wants to tell a war story from the trenches of Serenity Valley itself. They're aspiring to make a half-hour short film in some of the very same Southern California deserts that Whedon et al used for the original flashbacks from the show, and their approach to the costuming looks completely legit from what we saw in Firefly. The general plot is focused on a detachment of Independent soldiers who are tasked with evacuating civilians before they get caught in the crossfire of the Alliance assault. The story sounds interesting, if a little contrived, but in half-an-hour revisit to the most important bit of backstory to Firefly, contrived is almost essential.

How it might suck: The number one impediment to this campaign is that it's still being crowdfunded, and on a short cycle of only three weeks, too. That's why I've decided to make this fan film the first in-progress Kickstarter project I'll mention on the blog. Now, they're off to a fantastic start, having raised more than three grand in two days out of a goal of $16,000. I really believe they can raise the funds in that time, which makes the biggest question how you're going to see it. As a fan film it won't be on television or in theatrical releases. Fan gatherings will doubtless show it as part of charity events of "Can't Stop the Serenity" where the movie Serenity and various fan films are shown to the gathered fans to help raise money for "Equality Now". But pledgers will be able to get digital downloads or DVDs of the film, to ensure supporters can watch it at any time. I have other concerns about this project, but the fact is that I think they deserve the chance to make the mistakes I think they'll fall into. Support the campaign, get them in the air, and then we'll see what's what.



*"My John Thomas is gonna pop off and fly around the room there's so much tasty here." -Jayne Cobb, "Heart of Gold" Firefly

(Belated) Memorial Day at the Nerdery

This is a bit late, obviously. The beloved spawn is to thank, as he decided to throw a ship-fit like none other to inaugurate his first Memorial Day. To get the authentic feel for the creative cauldron that crafted this article, put the nearest piglet in a hot bath and occasionally stick a table fan up to your ear. That will approach the level of painful distraction the drooling dear fostered for my day off.

It's Memorial Day today, a United States holiday dating back to 1865, when freedmen decorated the graves of Union soldiers. Throughout the rest of the 19th century and into the 20th, Decoration Day was a time to specifically honor the sacrifices of Union soldiers who fought and died in the Civil War. After World War I, it became a time for Americans to commemorate all their fallen soldiers, and the term Memorial Day became more and more prevalent. In the 1960s, Congressional bills formalized the holiday's title as Memorial Day, and established it as the last Monday of every May.

So now you're here on a three day weekend, reading a blog. Maybe you watched a parade today, listened to a ceremony, and are having a barbecue. The kids are running around, playing in some of the first hot, sunny weather the midwest has seen this year. Dogs are getting disproportionate amounts of exercise today, and the chittering robins are back on your porch, flitting around from branch to deck to feeder in their ever-bobbing daily routine. Routine. It's a summer holiday--the summer holiday, really--ushering in warm weather and that comfortable summertime pace of life when you saunter from one air-conditioned environment to another before dipping into a pool or breathing in some affirming grill smoke.

And where are the decorations on the graves of soldiers? What are you remembering today? Did you wake up and think of the sacrifices of others today, or did you rush to get that chicken marinade started?

I'm a firm believer in the power of entertainment. What we enjoy in our leisure time, and why, informs the choices we make, the mental habits we feed, and the lives we lead. Being a nerd isn't just a vapid way to spend disposable income and fill free time. It's about exciting the mind and the heart in a youthful, exuberant way that ultimately uplifts and edifies. So today I have a selection of nerd-approved media--games, books, and movies--to help jog your Memorial Day into something more than the first barbecue of the summer.

Some of these pieces of entertainment will doubtless seem trivial, almost crassly so, compared to the others. They are not selected on equal footing, either by appropriateness to my purpose or by overall merit. Instead, they are selected as a cross-section of media that can all be used to help stir your thoughts towards the true purpose of today. Every nerd should be intimately familiar with at least a couple of these, but everyone--nerd or not--should be able to read and appreciate the import of at least one item on this list. They aren't necessarily cerebrally concerned with sacrifice or Memorial Day itself, but they all lend themselves quite well to introspection on this day of remembrance.

Ken Burns: The Civil War (documentary mini-series)

Since 1990, Kens Burns' nine part series on the Civil War has dominated the subject, and for good reason. Presented with a deliberate pace, evocative sound and visuals, it takes viewers through the five years of the war with a careful attention to the personalities of both the famous figures who defined history and the average men and women who made history. In its constant wealth of quotes, journal entries, and memoirs from Americans throughout the war, few documentaries do such a great job of making history and the sacrifices of our forebears real.

Memoir 44 (board game)
Few board games are both so accessible and so historically concerned as Memoir 44. A board game by Days of Wonder, the makers of the family classic Ticket To Ride, Memoir 44 is a wargame that recreates the seminal battles of World War II. Each scenario for the game starts with a paragraph or two of description of the historical setting, which frames each game in concrete terms that helps to bring the key moments of the war to life. The rules are extremely intuitive and straight-forward, allowing kids as young as 8 to play, and games rarely last more than an hour and are frequently much shorter. These two factors mean that Memoir 44 can not only be a keystone family night game, but it can easily serve as a valuable illustration to children when they are first learning about World War II. And for the rest of us, it's a vibrant reminder of the moments that laid the groundwork for our modern era, which we forget all too often.

Captain America (comic book series)
The origin story of Captain America, both as a character and as a comic, is a story of enduring patriotism. Created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby a full year before the United States of America entered the war, their comic was met with a mixed response at first. Depicting a staunchly political, war-oriented plot, the comic predicted America getting pulled into the war a year before Pearl Harbor, and anti-war groups sent the pair hate mail and threats for it. Time and events proved them right, though, and Captain America became one of the most popular superheroes of all time. But beyond being another story of a guy in tights, Captain America is--and always has been--about personal endurance in doing what is right, a symbol of the generation that created him and the soldiers he leads in the comics' plots.

Halo (video game series)
The Halo video game series is about the personal sacrifices of soldiers. It gets overlooked in the vanity of the FPS(first-person shooter) genre and the spectacle of the science-fiction settings, but its story is a tribute to the sacrifices of soldiers throughout history. The main character is a class of soldier that invokes the Spartans of Thermopylae, the Fall of Reach parallels the Battle of the Alamo, and the celebrity of the main character evokes a general patriotism in humanity that smacks of Captain America himself. The games Halo 3, Halo: ODST, and Halo: Reach in particular all feature narratives that give sensitive honor to these themes, and the novels (especially those by Eric Nylund) elaborate on them by emphasizing the personal grotesqueries the Spartans have endured and the casual apathy they receive from the people they regularly protect.


Red Dawn (movie, soon to be remade. Spoiler alert)
This soon-to-be-remade classic from 1984 is literally a memorial movie. Virtually all the movie's protagonists die over the course of the movie, not all nobly, but the determination and gung-ho violence of the movie is just sensitive enough to make the film's ending shot of the monument to the resistance resonate on a real, gripping level. Considering it is an 80s commie-killing action movie, I am actually surprised that John Milius exhibited the restraint he did in making such a dramatically even-handed film, relatively speaking.

The Things They Carried (book)
Tim O'Brien's book The Things They Carried is a life-changing, heart-rending book. A series of short stories about 'fictional real events', the book is a series of endearing, disgusting contradictions that help to illustrate but not explain the trials and depth of personal loss those who served during Vietnam endured. It's a tough book to get through, like so many truly great stories, but the emotional fatigue I felt when I put the book down is priceless. There's a vague sense of enlightenment that comes from reading this book that always puts me in mind that this is what Memorial Day should always and ever entail.


These aren't substitutes--or even progenitors--of patriotism, pride, or anything like it. These are examples of how the things we nerds love and revel in have the capstones for introspection of all we owe to those who died for our security and freedoms--in times past and time yet to come.