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Comments and opinions expressed on THE KNIGHT SHIFT are those of Christopher Knight and not necessarily those of subjects discussed in this blog, of advertisers appearing on it or of any reasonable human being. Any correspondence/irate letters/lawsuit threats/Nigerian e-mail scams can be sent to theknightshift@gmail.com.
Over the years I've expressed my fondness for Monsterpocalypse: Privateer Press's game of giant kaiju battling it out in cities that players put together before thrashing them to smithereens. It's an awesome game that has a lot of appeal and when it first came out a decade and a half ago it enjoyed quite a dedicated fan base.
Then some decisions were made. And they weren't necessarily for the better. In its original iteration Monsterpocalypse was a "blind box" game that you bought a package of without knowing what was in the box. The idea was that you could trade game pieces with others. Some of us filled out our factions by purchasing the wanted pieces on eBay. That in itself was sort of a fun pastime "game within the game". That wound up being replaced by traditional packaging that let you see what you were getting. And then came the movie rights getting optioned by Tim Burton, and that put the game in a holding pattern of sorts. A few other things happened too that impacted Monsterpocalypse.
And then came the Kickstarter for the board game edition. The one that licensee Mythic Games promised the fans. It was basically the same game as the regular miniatures game, but with a few things like the game maps upgraded to sturdy stock as well as the pieces being higher quality plastic. It was a project that launched on Kickstarter: the premiere platform for crowd-funded games, books, music albums and even movies. The Monterpocalypse board game Kickstarter revved up on November 2nd, 2021 and by the time it ended it had pretty much met all its stretch goals.
And then for whatever reason, Mythic Games went bust. There was going to be no delivery of the game. Many people - and I was one of them - went "all in" on the project: backing the core game itself and all the miniature sets. It was a few hundred dollars investment (but I had saved up from the COVID "stimulus checks" that the government had handed out). Anyone who invested in the board game wound up all out of the money they had pledged. Meanwhile Mythic seems to have split the scene entirely, and I don't think anyone got their dough refunded.
Here's my write-up about the situation, from October 2023. That post got a lot of attention from all over the place. Maybe what I'm about to post this time will be as widely read, for other reasons. It's not a complete salve for the wound but it's at least something...
A few weeks ago on January 30th Privateer Press published a massive update on the state of Monsterpocalypse, with an especially strong emphasis on what went down with Mythic. Privateer Press has expressed a lot of regret about what happened with the Kickstarter, and I believe we should take them at their word. What happened was completely beyond their control. But it looks like they are taking steps to make right that situation.
So going forward, Privateer has announced that they're shifting their production to make it "made to order" for Monsterpocalypse. And that furthermore, those who got left high and dry by Mythic are going to be given the STL files that will allow players the option of 3D-printing the various monsters, units, and buildings. There is also something of an authoritative book in the works, and Privateer is hinting that there may be other things coming down the pike for the franchise.
Personally, I think that Privateer is playing it safe, maybe too much. The game started out solid and there's no reason why it can't be solid again. The pieces don't have to be fully painted: just produce them the old-fashioned way with plastic molds and they will sell well in the brick-and-mortar stores. All it needs is some marketing to help get it past the King Kondo-size gorilla in the room: the Mythic fiasco. I for one would certainly invest a little in putting together a complete army for my favorite factions (especially the Lords of Cthul).
For anyone else with an interest in Monsterpocalypse, there may be reason to be of good cheer. The franchise is back firmly in the hands of its creators and they are paying attention to what has happened and are doing something to win back the fans. That's a lot of responsibility they're assuming and I think, again, we should take them at their word.
(Maybe I'l be able to once again play on my self-designed map of Reidsville, North Carolina!)
UPDATE 02/26/2025: Privateer posted a progress report a few days ago on February 21st. Looks like they're going full-bore with their intention of making the 3D-printable files available to everyone who invested in the Kickstarter. They get bigtime props from this blogger for that. As you can see from the report if you were in on the Kickstarter, you can go to MyMiniFactory.com and create an account with the e-mail address you used with your Kickstarter account and that will get you on the way to (soon) getting the STL/LYS files.
I know very little about 3D printing at home other than it requires STL files to work from. So if you have a printer perhaps this will all make sense to you :-)
I very rarely play video or computer games anymore. Mostly it's because of a lack of time. And there are other amusements too, like having a miniature dachshund. But that doesn't mean I don't have an active interest in the industry...
(I am currently trying to finish Fallout: New Vegas at last, whenever I'm having some downtime. It's only been out since 2010. Time to wrap that baby up!)
There is one game franchise that is especially near and dear to my heart though: the Gears of War series.
Maybe it's because each of the games seem to have coincided with some circumstance in my life. Gears of War was released on November 7th, 2006. That was also Election Day of my first/likely last political campaign. Then came Gears of War 2 two years later. That game came out a few weeks after the worst thing that ever happened to me. I had lost everything except a few belongings including, somehow, my Xbox 360. That second Gears game provided a much needed distraction from myself. And then in 2011 came Gears of War 3. I think my girlfriend at the time found my excitement to be more than a bit amusing... like when I called her on the phone at 10 p.m. to tell her that I'd successfully defended Anvil Gate.
I haven't been able to play Gears of War: Judgment yet though. Again, circumstances coincided and not the best of them at that. And I haven't had much opportunity to get a more modern Xbox system, so the fourth and fifth of the main Gears series are still unplayed by me.
Maybe someday I'll get that newer Xbox. Maybe it'll coincide with a new BioShock game (another game series I love immensely). And based on what was released yesterday, I'm making it a personal goal to get that Xbox X or whatever it's called...
Behold the announcement trailer for Gears of War: E-Day.
As the title suggests this game is set during around Emergence Day, fourteen years before the first Gears of War. These are considerably younger versions of Marcus and Dom. We're going to see the very first attacks by the Locusts upon the humans of Sera and based on the trailer it's going to be brutal.
Gears of War: E-Day is scheduled to be released sometime in 2025, probably around the fall if previous games have been any indication.
Maybe this next game's release will coincide with happier circumstances. For all of us.
For a few months now I've debated whether or not to make this post. I gave the company at issue a gracious amount of time to respond to the very MANY people who had taken them at their word and trusted them to produce a great product.
However it has now been almost seven months since anything in the way of official word has been published. That should have been plenty of time to let the backers know what's up. Claiming that it's been caught up in "manufacturing problems" isn't cutting it anymore.
So it's time for Mythic Games to level with us: Is there going to ever be a release of the Monsterpocalypse Board Game?
I've written before about my fondness for Monsterpocalypse: the miniatures game about giant kaiju monsters thrashing it out with one another atop a city that the players build, then demolish. Monsterpocalypse was first published by Privateer Press in 2008. And it enjoyed some terrific growth in popularity for a couple of years. Unfortunately a series of business decisions (making the game "collectible" and having to buy blind boxes of minis, the mishandling of the movie deal among others) caused a dip in interest. Privateer Press eventually brought the game back as a more traditional miniatures game, where players were free to buy whichever models they wanted and paint them on their own. Which was certainly how the game should have been marketed from the beginning. But it was still an awesome game. I certainly enjoyed playing it, especially with my precious Lords of Cthul faction.
Anyway, Monsterpocalypse has lingered for some years now. And then two years ago this fall a French company, Mythic Games, announced that it was adapting Monsterpocalypse as a board game. Basically the same as the regular Monsterpocalypse but with miniatures that didn't call for assembly and painting, and playable on the resilient surface typical of most board games.
There was a lot of hype for this game. And to finance it, Mythic Games turned to Kickstarter: that website devoted to letting people find backing from those who are interested enough to want a copy of the finished product. Kickstarter has been a terrific platform for fostering innovation and creativity. A few years ago I had thought about doing a Kickstarter, for a board game I had designed rules for. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) some friends convinced me of how politically incorrect the game would be, and that was the end of that particular project.
Mythic Games however, dangled a really beautiful carrot before us. There was going to be the core Monsterpocalypse Board Game. And the more backers supported it, there were "stretch goals" that would be unlocked: more miniatures that would produced. As backing grew, so would the game itself.
The Kickstarter went live on November 2, 2021. In a matter of minutes the core game set was fully funded. And by the time the Kickstarter had ended on November 24th more than $1,300,000 dollars had been raised. A handsome amount by any measure.
I backed the core game. My finances were a little off-kilter at the time (in short, I was skint broke). But then came the stimulus check from the government and I decided that I wanted to go "all-in" on the Monsterpocalypse Board Game. When the pledge manager was activated after the Kickstarter itself, I loaded up and pledged support for all of the unlocked minis, as well as faction-dedicated boxes with more minis. It wasn't every product that I put down for, but I wanted to have a complete set of all the factions so that if I played someone we would have all the options available.
Well, delivery of the game and all it's associated products was stated to be around November 2022. A reasonable amount of time. Mythic Games after all had to mold the zillions of pieces, print the various paper/board components, do everything required for marketing a board game. And for awhile we the backers were getting updates from Mythic about how the production was coming along.
And then, inexplicably, the updates - which had been weekly and then became something to expect monthly - began to decrease in frequency.
This concerned many backers. Was there something wrong with production? Mythic elaborated that time was needed to machine the molds. And then it was the global supply chain breakdown that plagued many manufacturers world-wide. And these were reasonable, the backers thought.
But the rate of updates was decreasing even more. And some were now wondering if Mythic was committed at all to giving us Monsterpocalypse Board Game.
Well, some backers began demanding refunds. I cannot recall if this has at all happened. I do know that Mythic Games is offering store credit for its other products.
Ahhhhh yes, the "other products". Mythic Games meanwhile had been selling and doing Kickstarters for more games. While apparently doing not only nothing at all about the Monsterpocalypse intellectual property, but it's been speculated by many that the company took that $1.3 million from the Monsterpocalypes drive and has been applying it to their own IPs.
Is that the truth? I don't know... but I can report that bulk e-mails have been regularly received by my main account, pitching other games. I've tried unsubscribing but that's not happening.
Those updates? The ones that Mythic promised at the start of the year would be a regular feature? The most recent update was on March 31. There has been absolutely nothing from the company about Monsterpocalypse since then. Complete radio silence.
This, is unacceptable.
If the company would be straight with us, and give assurance that the Monstepocalypse Board Game was being produced even now, then I might... might... be willing to wait another year. I believe a number of backers of this project would be willing too.
Unfortunately the more shady that Mythic Games gets with us, the more that our patience runs thin. The more that some might be inclined to press legal charges against the company. Mythic Games is based in Paris however, which may make litigation that much more wonky. But I'm sure there are some with a little know-how and understanding of the French legal system who could start a court case against the company.
A year and a half ago I was cheerfully steering readers of this blog to the Monsterpocalypse Board Game pledge manager. I believed with honest intent that Mythic Games was going to deliver on this product. However it increasingly is becoming apparent that the resources pledged on this particular Kickstarter have been misappropriated and abused and that there is no publishing of this game that is actively being pursued.
Mythic Games made me look foolish. It did that for everyone who was enthusiastic about Monsterpocalypse not only about this particular product, but about the entire franchise. Monsterpocalypse is a very fun pastime. To see it treated like this, is abhorrent. It deserves much better. Maybe it's primary publisher Privateer Press can take over the project. But that would require the original funding being transmitted to them, and I don't think that's going to be possible.
What am I trying to say with this post?
Avoid Mythic Games like the plague. That company has abused our trust in it. If you've been contemplating getting this Monsterpocalypse-based game, DO NOT DO SO. Neither would I recommend any other product that Mythic Games is presenting as a game.
Mythic Games owes us a solid explanation. And if there is no Monsterpocalypse coming, it owes us our money back.
Will that happen? I doubt it. But at least with this article some may have warning against doing business with them again.
EDIT 10/18/2023 8:53 PM EST: A correction. I have been notified by a number of readers that while Mythic Games has much of their operations in France, their headquarters is located in Luxembourg. This blogger appreciates that bit of information.
Behold my new Ork big mek with kustom force field:
This is a model that I assembled three years ago, in the initial days of the COVID pandemic. It seemed there wasn't going to be much travel for awhile, and there were a few Warhammer 40,000 minis that I had accumulated but never gotten around to giving much attention toward. It was as good a thing as any to occupy myself with. I put this together and it finally dawned on me that the lockdown could last months instead of weeks. So he just kinda lingered unpainted on a shelf.
Anyway it's now 2023 and Warhammer 40K is hotter than ever and poised to get even bigger. And I wanted to see if I still had my mad mini-painting skillz. I'm rather pleased with how this little fella turned out. So far as in-game mechanics goes, a big mek carrying a force field bestows a good level of protection for nearby friendly forces against enemy fire.
I need to come up with a name for him though. I like to name my minis. Gives them a little personality as they fight their way across the board. I've already got my warboss Kaneegutz (left). He's a character that I cobbled together from eight different kits. That's a photo from a few months ago though. Since then I've widened the base he's standing on with an adapter, and textured the base with astrogranite technical paint (available on Games Workshop's website and many game stores). So he's "good 'n proppa" for battle.
Next up: a box of the new Ork boyz. Unfortunately they don't have the pose-ability of the previous boyz minis (which I love) but I'm going to give the new guys a similar paint scheme and spread them around the units. Infuse my squads with a little extra flavor. Or maybe I should grant my lads some heavy support and get a deff dread. That's one of the things why this is such a fun hobby: there's no one correct way to play. Just go however it feels right for you. Who knows, if I get good again I may put together a list and enter a tournament sometime. That would be a lot of fun :-)
EDIT 02/19/2023 12:57 a.m.: I've decided to name my new big mek Erk DeffWelda. After my good friend, true renaissance man, master welder and professional Santa Claus, Eric Smith. Who has taught me much about life and he deserves being immortalized as a Warhammer miniature. I look forward to unleashing him on the field of battle!
Way back around 2009 or so I got into the Warhammer 40,000 miniature game hobby. It started with the now-legendary Assault on Black Reach boxed set, which included two armies: Space Marines and Orks. I had a lot of fun putting the miniatures together and painting them, and then played against other people at game stores in Greensboro and Burlington. There are a lot of different factions in Warhammer 40K but I gravitated toward the Orks as my favorite. It's hard not to like a mob of green-skinned hooligans shootin' and cuttin' their way through the opposition all the while screaming "WAAAGH!"
In the years since I drifted toward other things, but Warhammer 40,000 never left my mind. I love the setting, the lore, the beautiful miniatures, the various armies to choose from... there's a lot of good to be said about it. The game is over 35 years old and is popular worldwide.
And it looks as if it's about to get even more popular. The other week the announcement came that Henry Cavill is spearheading development of Warhammer 40,000 film and television projects for Amazon Prime. Cavill became well known during the COVID pandemic for posting photos of his own miniatures. The guy knows and respects Warhammer. I trust him to deliver the goods.
Anyway, it seems as good a time as any to get back into the hobby. This past week I returned to a miniature - an Ork Big Mek with Kustom Force Field - that I had glued together in the early days of the COVID lockdown. It had been lingering unfinished for almost three years and I felt it needed to be "good 'n proppa". I still have the paint I used back in the day and earlier tonight started working on the mini, only to find that my goblin green had become too thin to use. A new bottle is on its way so I'll get back to that mini later this week.
But the Orks I've already had all this time deserve some loving care too. For one thing they need to be adequately based, not just glued to the base. I ordered some astrogranite paint from the Games Workshop site along with a texturing tool for spreading it. The first mini to get its base so treated is the Weirdboy that I worked on around 2012. Here's how it came out:
It's a plastic model and it originally had his left foot atop some debris on the ground. I removed the debris with a knife so that it looks like he's got his leg raised. Maybe he's trying to run away from the grots (the mini-orks) struggling to keep him chained down. Whatever, I think he looks better than how the model comes as.
After I finish the Big Mek I'm going to bring my other miniatures up to snuff. The base sizes for many of the minis has changed since I played last, so there are some special adapter rings that can be put on the pre-existing bases to make them the correct size. Once that is done (to almost 40 Ork boyz) I'll be giving them the astrogranite treatment too. And I'll need to also do further work on Warboss Kaneegutz: my custom-designed leader mini.
And once I'm satisfied with my Ork army... well, I've also been getting some Space Marines minis. I've had in mind creating my own chapter. Some years ago I had a thought that, surely there are some religions still active in the forty-first millennium, that hadn't been wiped out. Inspired by the Dune novels I came up with the notion that the Jewish faith is still practiced in the far future. What better way to be concealed than to hide in plain sight as a Space Marines chapter that nobody will question? So drawing from history I'm going to make a chapter based on the Maccabees. And name the minis after friends of mine (the chapter master will be Marco Solomonius). I want it to be an army composed of traditional "standard" marines as well as the newer Primaris ones. Just need to figure out a name for the chapter. And color scheme of course.
Following that... who knows. I may put together a small force of Word Bearers. It might be fun to play a purely evil army every now and then.
I figure getting back into Warhammer 40K is going to be quite an enjoyable pastime. It will also be something that will take my mind off of actively writing my book. Some casual downtime may let my brain work subconsciously on what to write, without me actively addressing the matter.
Expect pics of more miniatures as they're completed :-)
Several years go, this blogger went a little nuts over Privateer Press's Monsterpocalypse. The kaiju-inspired miniatures game became a staple every week at friendly local game store HyperMind. I ended up collecting a complete army for all the factions that got released.
Then something happened: Privateer Press sold the rights to a Monsterpocalypse movie. The project - which was to have been helmed by Tim Burton - did not get made. And the game languished in licensing hell for several years. And then a few years ago Privateer Press brought Monsterpocalypse back: as a "hobby game". The minis were no longer pre-painted, although they were somewhat larger than the original models. By that time I wasn't feeling up to getting into the game again, though my love of the concept was always there.
Well, call Monsterpocalypse the franchise that just won't die, because soon there'll be ANOTHER way to get your kaiju-crushing kicks! A few months ago Privateer Press announced along with Mythic Games the coming of the Monsterpocalypse Board Game:
Look! Game trailer!
A Kickstarter campaign followed and it was very successful at meeting its aims (I think the final "stretch goal" was the mini of a giant radioactive corgi dog).
The project is now on Gamefound, where you can do a late pledge for the core game along with any of the add-ons... and there are MANY. The game will be released for retail sale but if you want to get in on it sooner (estimated shipping date for the Kickstarter product is November 2022) you'll want to go to the above link on Gamefound and get at least the Smasher pledge. That'll snag you not only the Core box's eight monsters, you're also getting the unlocked fifteen other monsters: that's at LEAST a seven hundred dollar value for $119.
Needless to say, I'm back in the game. I pledged during the Kickstarter and have since tacked on a few of the add-ons. Especially the Simian Corp one (because really, who can resist giant monkeys and evil conglomerates?). It's a great deal and if you like giant monsters and robots thrashing the crap out of each other, you're DEFINITELY going to want to check it out!
A few weeks ago I found my Game Boy Advance. Still in pristine condition after being in a really nice case all this time. Vintage game consoles seem to be enjoying a renaissance lately, like systems that play Atari and Nintendo Entertainment System cartridges on high-def television sets. And this particular Game Boy Advance holds a special place in my heart, it having been a gift for Christmas eighteen years ago.
I still had a bunch of cartridges on hand: Game Boy Advance ones as well as for the classic Game Boy and the Game Boy Color. They all still work great! Except for one small problem...
The cartridges that utilize battery backup have almost all run dry.
Battery backup in game cartridges goes back at least as far as the original The Legend of Zelda for the NES. After choosing to save a game it would use the built-in battery to hold the game state and vital stats, like which items your character possessed, amount of life it had, whatever. I guess the most well known example of batteries used in game cartridges are the first several editions of Pokemon, before it went to flash memory starting with the Game Boy Advance (though batteries still powered the internal clocks of those cartridges).
But as with all such things, the batteries eventually go dead. And along with it any practical means of playing the game again. If only there was a way to replace that battery...
It turns out, that there is. And it works amazingly well!
For the first attempt I used my copy of The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening. Bought when it first came out in the summer of 1993. Took me a few weeks to beat it (SPOILER: the entire game is just a dream, sorta like when Pam Ewing found Bobby in the shower). Twenty-seven years later the battery inside the cartridge had long been dry. Perfect specimen for experimentation. In the pic to right you see the cartridge along with the 4.5mm screwdriver. None of the Nintendo gear seems to have used standard screwdrivers. Instead they're special "security" screws. That set for seven bucks I just told you about? It comes with 3.8mm and 4.5mm screwdrivers as well as a tri-wing screwdriver that's supposed to come in especially handy for Game Boy Advance cartridges. Along with opening up other Nintendo cartridges and game systems.
So first we open the cartridge (shown with the new battery):
Instead of lifting straight off, the top of the cartridge sort of slides up and out from the rest of the plastic casing. And then we get to the guts of the thing:
See that round looking gimmick? That's the original battery, which is what will be replaced. It looks welded to the board. Which, it kinda is. But it's going to be a snap to remove it.
Simply heat up the soldering iron and apply it to the places where the battery is soldered to the board. It should not take much effort at all to do this to each solder. Do NOT apply the iron to the battery itself! Just on the two metal tabs coming off of the battery (which, is what they are there for):
And here is the old battery now removed from the cartridge:
Make extra sure that you are soldering the right tabs to the proper places on the circuit board (i.e. + to + and - to -. But if you keep in mind how the old battery was placed, it should be easy to match them up right):
Here is our new battery completely soldered onto the board:
And now the cartridge is closed up and screwed down tight, looking brand new as ever!
But will it work?? The game turned on fine when inserted into the Game Boy Advance. I started a new game/file and after playing around with it a few minutes I saved and turned it off. Waited thirty seconds before turning it on again.
And there is the saved game:
The entire operation took less than five minutes! Emboldened by the first surgery, I now turned the soldering iron to Pokemon Blue. I bought this on a lark in 1998, out of curiosity about what the Pokemon craze was about.
A few minutes and one new battery later...
My Pokemon Blue now has at least 22 more years left before it needs the battery changed again. Which means I've plenty of time to catch them all before I turn 70. Who knows: I may buy a GameCube and the other intervening consoles between Game Boy and Switch or whatever, just to keep expanding my collection until the day I die. Yes, that too is possible.
So if you want to extend the longevity of your Game Boy cartridges, don't be intimidated by the batteries! A few simple tools are all you need to keep your games going for the next several decades :-)
If you're one of the few dozen who haven't seen Bird Box on Netflix yet, it's about a woman leading two children to safety. The catch is that they must remain blindfolded, or very bad things will happen to them. Being that ours is the same culture that a year ago made a "challenge" out of eating Tide Pods laundry detergent, of course now many idiots people are making a game of doing ANYTHING blindfolded.
From tonight's weekly gathering of our Go club:
That's from an actual game. I was blindfolded, Leo wasn't.
One movie that has particularly stuck with me has been Pi. Darren Aronofsky's first film hit theaters twenty years ago this summer and fast became a sensation. Especially among mathematicians, who for the first time had a taut psychological thriller of their very own!
A quick and dirty synopsis of Pi: Max is a math prodigy since childhood and has become obsessed with finding an ordered pattern within the stock market. What he comes across is far bigger and has him targeted by everyone from corrupt corporate agents to Hassidic Jews (just watch it, it does make sense). Anyhoo, there are a few scenes where Max goes to visit his old mentor Sol. And those are some of the best-written and finest played scenes of the entire film (YouTube clip with some spoilers). But one thing had bugged me since the first time I saw Pi...
"What the heck is that game they keep playing?"
Okay, I knew it was called "go" because that's what Max and Sol referred to it as. And it held great fascination with Sol, especially when he spoke of it as being "a microcosm of the universe". Obviously something deeper going on here than simply putting what looked like Mentos and Peppermint Patty candy across an empty wooden Mercator projection. And when I rewatched Pi again recently, once again I found myself wondering what go is.
So as with most things new to me, I yielded to curiosity and looked further.
Turns out, go is old. Like, really old. It was first played in China around 500 B.C. And it is the oldest continuously played board game in known history, or at least played with the consistently same rules. Backgammon can still claim to be the oldest board game. The problem is, what we today know as "backgammon" comes down from earlier games that we still don't know very much about their rules. The sets exist, including those "of ancient Mesopotamia" with dice made of bone that Locke told Walt about in the very first episode of Lost. But in all likelihood the favorite pastime of the Oceanic 815 survivors bears little resemblance to whatever those archaeologists pulled out of the ground.
And besides, backgammon has just a few checkers to move around the board. Making the game be go might have presented logistical problems and inhibited the story flow a tad. I'm gonna assume that Locke, aficionado of games that he is, is familiar with go.
The game has had many names over the centuries, and it has regional monickers in China and South Korea (and hopefully North Korea also) but for most of the modern world it's called "go". And interestingly the Japanese word for it is "atari", which is also a term used during a game (we'll get to that soon). And when Nolan Bushnell was coming up with a name for his new video game company, he thought that "Atari" fit well with his guiding vision.
Bizarrely however, there was never a go game for the Atari 2600. We got that horrid-sounding Pac-Man port and turkeys like Custer's Revenge and Porky's... but a cartridge for the company's namesake? It never happened.
But let's not digress.
Anyway, after a few weeks of playing around with a go app on my iPad Pro and looking at resources on the Intertubes about the game, I decided it was time to plunge in headlong and experience go for myself. To have a go at go. So last night I went out to go. And when I came back I had gone and went back from go.
Wait... what were those Korean names for this again?
The website for the American Go Association has a massive list of local go clubs. I found one near my present location and showed up at their weekly gaming session. Go, I was told, is still not a terribly big game in the United States and much of the western world, but it has been steadily growing in popularity over the past few decades. Movies like Pi are probably a reason (just as Dungeons & Dragons has been resurging with a vengeance since Stranger Things debuted a couple years ago). There were three regulars who arrived around 6 in the evening in the side room of a nearby restaurant, and since go is a two-player game all four of us could be playing.
So, about go. Very simple game. The board is a grid of lines. A full-size standard game is a 19 by 19 grid but those who are beginnners or just want a short game can play with a 9 by 9 board. There are two sets of playing pieces, called stones. One set is white, the other is black. Each player takes a color and beginning with black, proceeds to place stones at the intersections on the grid. The stones don't move as the pieces in chess or checkers can. They just stay on the board. Unless they are removed. Because the object of go is to possess the most territory at the end of the game. "Territory" being measured by the exposed intersections around the stones. Each stone on its own has four of these intersections, called "liberties". And if a stone gets surrounded on all four of its liberties by the opposing player, that stone is taken off the board and figured into the final score. It's not about seizing the other player's stones however. That's just one part of the greater scheme to get territory.
It all boils down to one color of stones getting more coverage on the board than the other. And it's a ridiculously simple conceit. But as I am coming to discover through both talking about the game with others and my own meager experience thus far, go is much, much deeper than a mere board game. The ancient Chinese considered it an essential element of philosophical training for all true gentlemen. Confucius wrote much about go. It is a game, a practice of logic, an exercise in intuition, an introspection of one's being... all of these and more, all at once.
Go is a game steeeped in ancient tradition. It is something that many approach with the trappings of ritual. Go is a game of legend and go games have become legend themselves. A particularly infamous match in the 1800s ended with a player keeling over bleeding on the board before dying. Other games have gone on for months, even years. And then there is what has come to be hailed as "the Atomic Bomb Go Game": a championship match that was well underway in Hiroshima on the morning of August 6, 1945. "Little Boy" detonated a few miles away, the blast blew out the windows of the house and knocked one of the players off his feet, and the board had to be reset to where the stones were at the moment of the explosion. All present did these things after going outside the house to see what happened. They beheld the first mushroom cloud in the history of warfare, then went back inside to continue the game. They took a break for lunch and later that afternoon the game was finished.
I dont know how else to put it: that is total bad-ass. I dare anybody tell me that go isn't absolutely hardcore. Now THAT is a game I wanna be hunkered down with come the apocalypse!
Well, let's get to my first game of go, last night...
You know how when you're like seven or eight years old, and when Thanksgiving dinner comes all the adults sit at the real table while you and your sister Sally and cousin Oliver and the rest of the kids were around that card table in the corner? Well, that's how it was sorta like for me yesterday evening. Starting out on the 9 by 9 board. But it's all well and good, because I had a great instructor in Brendan, who described the game and how to play it far better than I can for now.
One cool thing about go is that there is a handicapping gimmick that lets everybody play against everybody else regardless of individual skill level. So even if you're a greenhorn like me, you don't have to get into a flopsweat as if you were playing chess against Kasparov.
Brendan has been playing for a few years now. Mike, another player who came last night, has been into go for over thirty years. Leo, the fourth to arrive, has been playing for a decade or so. And if you want to see what go looks like with two seasoned veterans full-bore into a game...
Something that struck me about this game: it's sense of being an organic experience. Look at that board, in the game between Mike and Leo. It starts off empty, but the "feel" of moment, of the session, of the stones and of whatever fancy goes across their minds... what starts as an empty board becomes like a living, breathing organism. And it merits considering that the total number of possible games of go are more than there are subatomic particles in the observable universe! I already knew that was the same for chess. Well, the number of possible go games is exponentially larger than that.
Think about it. I dare ya. Think about that until you go crazy. No wonder there was never an Atari cartridge for this game. Because even today computers find it exceptionally difficult to replicate the go experience. They can only somewhat approximate it. To really "get" go, you have to play it against another human, either in person or via the Internet.
Anyway, Brendan became the first person I ever played an actual game of go with, and he was just as I hoped he would be: merciless and unforgiving at least so far as the rule about "a stone laid is a stone played" goes. Because the best way to learn to play the game, is to PLAY the game just as its meant to be played! Okay, he encouraged me to take a mulligan in the first of the two games we played, but that was to illustrate something I hadn't seen yet. Otherwise, a lot of my stones wound up "in atari": the condition of being surrounded on three sides by the opponent and just one stone away from capture. I missed seeing a lot of stuff on the board that should have been screamingly obvious. Brendan told me he was much the same when he began. That a person gets better at this as he or she plays go more and more.
Speaking of "atari", sometimes there's a weird event that happens when the players could be locked into an eternal see-saw of capturing each other. That's called "ko" and it can lead to a "ko battle" (or as Mike put it, "a gentlemanly hockey fight"). Fortunately there's a rule for that, and if the players get trapped into that situation one has to make a move that's beyond the ko, and that could prove advantageous. Again, go is a game of both logic and intuition. With a heavy emphasis on the latter.
Well, by the time I departed for the evening Brendan and I had played two games of go. The score of my very first game ever had me losing 44 to 4. The second game though went a bit better. I still got clobbered 33 to 7... but at least I did capture one stone that night!
And this is how Leo and Mike's board looked like at the end of their game:
Go games don't have a "definite" ending. They go on until one player resigns, or each player takes a passing turn, or I suppose until they just plain run out of stones. Or maybe they could add a new rule like they do with Monopoly and how the bank doesn't actually run out of money, you just get to use slips of paper or whatever else is on hand. And that is likely the only contribution I'll ever make to a grand game deep in millennia of lore and virtue.
And that was my first time playing go. And I've no doubt that I am just beginning. This is a game that has serious appeal to me. I'm looking forward to playing again, and trying to improve. Something that nobody ever fully masters, I was told. It's like golf: you can never completely comprehend this game, you can only keep getting better.
Much like how life is supposed to be, aye?
So if you want to have a go at go (no more puns, I promise!) one particularly good resource I've visited often is the American Go Association website. There is a rather whimsical little tutorial at TigersMouth.org that will teach you the game better than I ever could. The American Go Association site has links to merchants that sell go equipment: boards, bowls, stones (which can be made of plastic, glass, clamshell, pretty much most materials but probably not Play-Doh or chicken soup). You may be able to find inexpensive go sets at your friendly local game store or book seller. I've seen then priced anywhere from about thirty bucks on up to thousands of dollars... and that's just for the board itself.
But yeah, I'm probably going to play more of this. Go seems to have a really good community around it, and quite a diverse player base. And I can't help but think that in time, though it may be decades from now, it's going to become as popular among Americans as is already chess, checkers, and Cards Against Humanity!
After being gone for almost a year I ended up back in North Carolina this past weekend. Guess I’m still in "journey mode" since leaving Reidsville in June of 2016. It was a few days to take care of some business, hook up with longtime friends, make new friends, do a lot of writing... and playing Dungeons & Dragons?!?
It happened, all two of this blog's faithful readers! Saturday night in Burlington. At the HyperMind game store on Church Street: the one owned by my friend Denise and her family and that I've written about a number of times. The day before on HyperMind's Facebook page there was a notice about "Dungeons & Dragons for Beginners" on Saturday evening.
Those who know this blog and its strange curator are well aware: journalist that I be, I'll report on anything within reason. Like the Facebook Live I did from a marijuana store just over the Colorado side of the border with New Mexico And now here was a golden opportunity that had fallen into my lap to not just observe the return of a cultural phenomenon but to also participate firsthand. The Muse was beckoning.
I had never played Dungeons & Dragons (often abbreviated D&D). Not once. Although when I was a wee lad somehow I had in my possession "the red box” now spoken of in whispers and hushed reverence at tables of geekdom laden with soda cans and Doritos bags. Suffice to say, I was beyond out of touch with whatever had become of Gary Gygax's legendary RPG (that's "role-playing game", not "rocket propelled grenade"!). I knew that it was now being published by Wizards Of The Coast (having acquired the original TSR company many moons ago) and that it was in its fifth edition. And also that somehow lately Dungeons & Dragons has become crazy popular again. It's more a widespread success today than it was during its celebrated heyday of the Eighties. Celebrated... or condemned. Yeah I well remember the bad rap that D&D got about how it supposedly encouraged witchcraft and Satanic rituals and child sacrifice. Witness the thoroughly authoritative investigative work of one Jack Chick in his treatise "Dark Dungeons":
That's the only one of Chick's tract's to be adapted into a motion picture. Behold the trailer:
And some people still think of Dungeons & Dragons as that. When it's really just this:
A bunch of guys, ages 11 on up to late fifties, sitting around a table with various books, papers, pencils, and laptops and tablets. Yeah mobile devices 'cuz this ain't your daddy's D&D.
"Dungeons & Dragons for Beginners" kicked off at 5 on Saturday afternoon at HyperMind. And as always, we were hosted by the ever lovely and effervescent co-owner Denise. And she and her family would no doubt love for y'all to come and see their wonderful shop and ogle their wares, which includes everything from Candyland and Monopoly to Settlers of Catan to Magic: the Gathering to X-Wing Miniatures and Warhammer 40,000. They've also a sweet game room that's somehow mysteriously expanded since I was last in the area a year ago.
There were six newbies who showed up to an introductory game with a dude named Mike serving as "Dungeon Master". The Dungeon Master... or DM as he or she is often called (would a female Dungeon Master be a "Dungeon Mistress", or is that too dominatrixish?)... is the one who "runs the game". That means drawing up the outline of the adventure, populating it with various monsters and vagabonds, and trying to keep things on track as the traipse through the Forgotten Realms or Ravenloft or wherever draws toward it's intended conclusion (or not). Think of the Dungeon Master as being the conductor of a symphony orchestra the members of which can't decide if they want to play Mozart or Rush or "Weird Al" Yankovic.
Here is Mike. And he definitely knows what he's doing! He's been involved with fantasy role-playing since the original D&D back in 1974:
First thing on the agenda, the most crucial part of the experience because everything else blooms from it, is to create our characters. And you've a WAY humongous latitude here. Not just what "class" aka career you have like Fighter or Druid or Thief etc. but also what race to be. If you wanna take a break from being a baseline human for awhile you can be a dwarf or a half-elf or one of a jillion other species (I seem to vaguely recollect the Dark Sun campaign setting having giant grasshoppers you could choose as your race).
Anyhoo, I decided that befitting my surname I would be a Paladin. Which is kind of a crusader knight but he can also use magic effects like healing people who need it.
Here’s where things took a WILD deviation from anything I'd expected. A few years ago Wizards Of The Coast introduced an online tracking system that lets you record and manage how often you play, or something. Since this was an Adventurer's League that means you could theoretically roll up a character in Burlington and bring it to play with others in Emporia, Kansas. But you need something called a "DCI number". Which most people in the group already had because they played Magic: The Gathering also. And it can be used with Dungeons & Dragons. It wasn't necessary per se for this evening's event but still kinda made it official.
I whipped out the iPhone and went to the Wizards Of The Coast website and created an account and got my very own DCI number. Using a smartphone to play an old-school pen and paper RPG. Huh. Never saw THAT one coming. I suppose that now that I'm "logged into the system" with a DCI tracking number it means that I have consigned myself to an eternity of torment. Because the Wizards Of The Coast website is tied into a massive Cray cluster-booted mainframe known as "the Beast" controlled by George Soros somewhere in the bowels of the European Community bunker in Brussels and my name is now registered on it. That's how some of the lingering hysteria over Dungeons & Dragons would make it out to be...
Or maybe not.
So, got my race (human) class (Paladin) Alignment (Lawful Good) who is part of some faction called "Order of the Gauntlet" and now a DCI number. It was at this point that Mike whomped everyone upside the head with the announcement that we would be playing a pre-designed adventurer called "Tomb Of Annihilation".
WHAT?!? PLEASE tell me this isn’t related at all to "Tomb Of Horrors". Even if you've only a cursory knowledge of D&D and never actually played you've heard of "Tomb Of Horrors". The infamous adventure module from 1975 and created by Gary Gygax himself in order to humble all the "hacker and slasher" players who thought they could simply murderize their way through a quest. And... how shall I put this? Let's just say that fewer players have survived "Tomb Of Horrors" than there are Star Wars fans who have survived watching the entire The Star Wars Holiday Special:
Yeah. It's THAT perilous.
If "Tomb of Annihilation" was inspired by or derived from "Tomb Of Horrors", I didn't get to find out. Most of the fun with a role-playing game is to just ride along and see what happens and act in character. So it is that I didn't inquire about anything potentially spoiling the experience.
Dungeons & Dragons isn't set on any one particular "world" per se. It’s actually a vast cosmos of settings, from the prime material physical universe on through various dimensions of being (and our own Earth is in there somewhere). I think my personal favorite campaign setting world is Ravenloft because of the Lovecraftian horror atmosphere of the place though obviously I've never played a game in it. So after Mike announced we were seeking the Tomb of Annihilation he also noted that this was the classic Forgotten Realms country of Faerûn. Oh yeah, and because of something called the "death curse" associated with this particular officially published adventure there was NO resurrecting dead characters. Which normally would cost a bunch of in-game gold pieces. Not here though. Your character dies, there's no coming back. High stakes indeed!
Here is a map of the part of Faerûn we'd be romping across. It's on the players-facing side of the Dungeon Master's screen. That's the gimmick which the DM uses to hide all his notes and plots and ambushes from the players.
Okay well, we were all creating our characters, using the core material like Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook (which shot up to #1 selling item on Amazon when it came out... and I mean #1 selling item of EVERY category of merchandise!) and some official apps on iPad and whatever.
Being a Paladin, I got to have two "spells" which in the D&D realm are really like different prayers that the character's spiritual order has. Starting out with a first level Paladin you get "Divine Sense", which "senses evil to sixty feet" four times per day. And also "Lay On Hands" for healing.
"Lay On Hands"?! Far from Dungeons & Dragons transforming me into a Satan worshipper... it had converted me to a Pentecostal! At least Paladins are by default "Lawful Good" in alignment. Had it been "Chaotic Neutral" my character would be running around the wilderness like a medieval Benny Hinn. But at least he would have made his money the old fashioned way: by earrrrrning it.
(Award yourself a thousand XP if you know what that's a reference to and which actor without having to Google it.)
It was about this time, an hour or so into the characters getting created, that it dawned on me. That this was already a whole heap of fun. It was creative writing of a sort that hadn't been engaged in for so long that I'd forgotten it was there at all. All around me other players were doing the same thing.
Role-playing games can exercise the imagination as few things can, right from the getgo. No wonder Dungeons & Dragons and other RPGs are roaring back into popularity. This kind of imagination on the part of the player is almost a novelty in a time of Xbox consoles and mobile gaming. And the interaction is with living, breathing people who you are seeing and hearing and not looking at pixels of screennames. There is a need for authentic gaming in our era. Board games are returning with wild acclaim and traditional "pen and paper" RPGs with them. And that primal need for real human interaction is an enormous reason why, no doubt.
Okay well my character has got his stats, his equipment and his spells, now all he needed was a name. Once again consulting the iPhone (or as I often call it "the Mother Box") Google found a website that generates fantasy character names, for RPG use or hiding from the Internal Revenue Service or whatever. Several "next screen" clicks in and there was Denvorn-something. "Brother Denvorn" had a nice ring to it as a warrior monk, so that's what I went with.
And as a Paladin he's equipped with chainmail armor, a sword and shield, and also a holy symbol of his order, which can be worn as an amulet or emblazoned on his shield. I thought on the shield would have greater psychological value. I didn't have to design the symbol but there's space on the character sheets for a character description and I wanted to do at least a rough sketch. So here's Brother Denvorn with his sword, armor and holy symbol-equipped shield:
Lookin' good! Well enough to go into dungeons to fight dragons. Or at least into thick hedges to fight unwary orcs.
And now we were all set. Our merry band consisted of a Wood Elf Druid, a Ranger, a Sage, a Warlock, a "Self-Appointed Inquisitor", and yours truly the Paladin.
Mike's launch of the adventure was most ideal. A quick synopsis: that we'd been hired to move some cargo for this rich dude on a wagon following a road down from Neverwinter. However it seems that the guy and his guard had gone missing. First order of business: decide who is riding on the cart, who is walking beside it and who is walking ahead and at the rear. Since I was playing a Paladin the noble thing to do it seemed was to go in front of the party and act as a scout. And we were on our way!
It was some time later that our little caravan came upon two dead horses in the road. When asked the DM reported that they hadn't been there for more than a day. We also found some ransacked bags and an empty map case. Brother Denvorn moved closer to investigate, joined by Jaeger.
Roland and Azrael wanted a better look also, so they arrived and examined the scene also. Little did we know however that there were four goblins lurking in the bushes!
The volley of arrows they let loose did little damage to us. Had to make something called an Initiative roll:
We went into full retaliation mode. And Brother Denvorn went charging at the assailants, shield hefted and sword raised...
BAM!! Two of the goblins went down. But they bounded back and Leroy Jenk... I mean Brother Denvorn, who had been a hearty 12 points of health, got wounded by 5 points and went down to 7. Our Mage was likewise hit. One of the goblins was killed and after the melee I did the "laying on of hands" on the Mage and healed him for 2 and then gave myself a boost of 3.
A fine little battle to start the adventure off! However, we now had a dilemma. One of the goblins was greatly wounded but alive. What to do with him? An argument began: were we going to waste him now or keep him hostage and potentially extract information from him? None of our characters spoke any of the languages of goblins. I suggested that we keep him bound and then when we got to a town we would find someone to translate our interrogation. Furthermore that we should give him some healing, demonstrate "a quality of mercy" that might loosen his filthy mouth. And that’s what we HAD decided to do…
...except that TJ, the young lad playing Jaeger, went mad with power and with bloodthirsty relish made it an action to exsanguinate the goblin on his own. And now we had NOTHING to go on. Smooth move, kid! You were ALLEGEDLY a ranger of somewhat marginal good character. But then you had to go full Dexter Morgan-mode and now we've no leads on what happened to our employer.
Well, except that some of us had noticed a trail of dragged bootprints going off the path and into the woods. Should we keep going as planned, or go looking for what might be our employer? There was a chance he and his guard were still alive, and if we rescued them we might get rewarded with precious gold pieces. Taking a risk by leaving the wagon unguarded, we followed the trail.
Shortly after that, two of us fell into a shallow pit, and one of us almost triggered a snare. We decided that we had gone as far as we should for the night, and that it was time to camp and fully heal our wounds. By this time it was almost 9 PM in the real world and HyperMind was about to close for the night. Mike proclaimed that we woke up the next day, all healed up and with 75 experience points each to record on our sheets. Thus ended this first leg of the journey toward... I'm assuming... is the Tomb of Annihilation.
And that was my first time playing Dungeons & Dragons. And I had a blast! I can readily understand now why it has come back with a vengeance. Why it's rapidly gained appeal across a wide array of people, many of whom have never approached any role-playing game before. This is NOT something confined to the basements of geeks, dweebs, nerds, and unbathed comic book guys. Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition is a REAL thinkin' person's pastime. One that requires and demands being able to act, to adapt, to bring forth wisdom and foresight toward a situation. You know, much like skills needed in real life. After playing even this brief introduction to the game, one can easily envision a role-playing game like D&D being a useful tool in corporate training, psychiatric counseling, teaching civics and ethics to high school students and perhaps younger... there are all kinds of practical applications for what Gary Gygax came up with more than forty years ago.
And since some will no doubt be wondering about it and maybe even leave a comment about it: at no time during the game or afterward did I feel "the pull toward evil". Neither did I develop any inkling of obsession about it. I doubt that I ever will either. It was a few hours spent with a great group of people, and afterward we left feeling that it was a very enjoyable time and then we departed the store and went on with our lives. Might some people out there get too much into Dungeons & Dragons than is healthy so far as normal interactions with others? Yes, I would have to agree with that assumption. But it would be no more so than being obsessed with video games, or sports, or eating, or drinking, or anything else taken to excess. In that regard, a role-playing game is utterly mild in terms of hazard.
And neither did I have the sense that my spiritual life was impacted. Was there a religious component to my character? Yes, certainly. But however that figures into him as a character, it starts and stops there. Any further elucidation was not necessary, any more so than I would need to know the religious practices of Frodo Baggins or Princess Leia. And as with them, Brother Denvorn and his adventure was put down like any other book or movie until next time. And much of the next day was spent in time devoted to the relationship I have with God in the real world, with no thought whatsoever about how Denvorn might be spending his own quiet time. Gary Gygax himself was a devout Christian. Had he known that his creation would be an instrument to tempt people to turn away from God, he would not have published it in the first place.
So if you've been boggled at how a game that needs no board, no LCD screen, no batteries, and no wi-fi has made a raging comeback and has exploded at last into the mainstream, look around for a Dungeons & Dragons gaming group in your area. Or form one with your friends and dive on in. It's a LOT more fun than what you might have expected of it.
Oh yeah, one more thing: get yourself a set of dice. They come in all kinds of sizes and colors and textures. Like Harry Potter's wand, a good set of dice during an adventure becomes a part of you. And it's just really neat to roll around that 20-sided die in your hand while weighing your options when suddenly confronted with one of those blasted rust monsters.
